Product Description

M. Night Shyamalan (SIGNS, UNBREAKABLE, THE SIXTH SENSE), the director who brought you the world's greatest thrillers on DVD, now creates his most thought-provoking triumph yet ... breaking international records and dazzling audiences around the globe! THE VILLAGE is a smart, edge-of-your-seat chiller crawling with terrifying surprises and frightening twists and turns. An isolated, tight-knit community lives in mortal fear of an oppressive evil inhabiting the forbidden forest just beyond their tiny village. So frightening that no one ventures into the woods ... until one villager dares to face the unknown. With unforgettable performances from Joaquin Phoenix, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Adrien Brody, and newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard, this powerful motion picture is one of Hollywood's best psychological thrillers and ranks with the best of Hitchcock!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14626 in DVD
• Brand: BUENA VISTA HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2005-01-11
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, THX, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 108 minutes

Amazon.com
Even when his trademark twist-ending formula wears worrisomely thin as it does in The Village, M. Night Shyamalan is a true showman who knows how to serve up a spookfest. He's derailed this time by a howler of a "surprise" lifted almost directly from "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim," an episode of The Twilight Zone starring Cliff Robertson that originally aired in 1961. Even if you're unfamiliar with that Rod Serling scenario, you'll have a good chance of guessing the surprise, which ranks well below The Sixth Sense and Signs on Shyamalan's shock-o-meter. That leaves you to appreciate Shyamalan's proven strengths, including a sharp eye for fear-laden compositions, a general sense of unease, delicate handling of fine actors (alas, most of them wasted here, save for Bryce Dallas Howard in a promising debut), and the cautious concealment of his ruse, which in this case involves a 19th-century village that maintains an anxious truce with dreadful creatures that live in the forbidden woods nearby. Will any of this take anyone by genuine surprise? That seems unlikely, since Emperor Shyamalan has clearly lost his clothes in The Village, but it's nice to have him around to scare us, even if he doesn't always succeed. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker
M. Night Shyamalan has made a career out of devising films that manage to frighten and excite without ever quite coming alive. Given his obsession with the deceased, this may be construed as appropriate. Even by his standards, however, this new picture is dangerously dour. The setting is a hamlet in the American countryside, ringed by crackling woods and inhabited by a community so glum that its leader is played by William Hurt. The roles of his fellow-elders are taken by, among others, Sigourney Weaver and Brendan Gleeson, while the younger generation is represented by Joaquin Phoenix and Bryce Dallas Howard-the only live wire on the scene, and hence a considerable relief. The love between these two is the spark for mysterious occurrences, notably the invasion of the closed society by a bevy of red-robed woodland beasts. As is Shyamalan's wont, there are twists, although they are so heavily signalled as to be drained of shock; what is surprising is that, even here, in the midst of a humorless conceit, the viewer can be stirred and dismayed; when a director is damned for repeating himself, it can be a sign that he has touched a nerve whose rawness refuses to fade. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE
"Shyamalan gives the film a metaphorical weight that goes deeper than goose bumps."

Customer Reviews

Fool me four times? Not bad, M. Night Shyamalan
There is so much bad word of mouth out there about "The Village" that I had to go see it by myself because nobody wanted to see it with me. I avoided all the publicity about M. Night Shyamalan's fourth film so that I could make up my own mind. Besides, if the whole point is to see whether he can fool us again, why would you want to know anything on the chance that it would be too much? If the film gets spoiled by a review, then that is hardly giving the film a chance. Even when Penn & Teller show you how they do their trick, they get to do the trick first.

The Village is located in a valley surrounding by Covington Woods. The year is 1897 according to the tombstone we see at the start of the film. As we are introduced to life in the community we learn about the strange rules under which its inhabitants live. If you did not read the rules on the poster for "The Village," they are enacted during the first part of the film. Red is a bad color that cannot be seen because it attracts them, while mustard yellow is a color of safety. No one can enter the woods because that is where those of whom no one speaks will get you. If the warning bell is sounded, then head for the cellars in your houses immediately because they are coming.

A council of elders run the village, and their leader is clearly Edward Walker (William Hurt). They set the tone for the village, but in the wake of the death of a young child because of sickness, young Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) wants to leave the village, travel through the forbidden woods, and bring back medicine from one of the towns on the other side. Lucius is uncommonly brave. The young boys test their courage by standing on a stump on the border between the village and the woods, and Lucius is the record holder. But his courage could doom the Village by breaking the truce that has held between the two sides for many years.

Most of that you can pick up from the trailers for "The Village." Joaquin Phoenix as Lucius is clearly the hero of the film and you know know that there is no reason to set up these rules if they are not going to get violated as a major plot development in the film. Beyond that it is difficult to say anything that would not interfer with your chance to enjoy the film on its own terms. However, there are two things I can say.

First, given that he has backed himself in a corner it terms of always having to come up with some big secret twist for all of his films, Shyamalan does try to come up with something to meet the raised expectations. You can certainly decide afterwards that the secret was not big enough or good enough, but unless the film has been spoiled for you I cannot believe you are going to see everything that is coming. As we know from "Signs" and the rest of his films if there is one thing Shyamalan can do it is that everything fits together in the end.

Second, as I started to get into this film I decided that the character I really liked was Ivy Walker, played by Bryce Dallas Howard. That is the one name that appears in the opening credits that I did not recognize (remember, I avoided all the publicity) and so when it turned out that Bryce was playing Ivy, and that the actress is the daughter of Ron Howard I was surprised (no wonder she looked familiar without my recognizing her). This is a breakthrough performance, which may well be the only thing that everybody who sees "The Village" is going to agree on.

Early on in this film I decided what I wanted this film to be, not expecting that it would actually end up being that, so when it did I was both surprised and gratified. Since I never put much significance into the meaning of Shyamalan's movie twists, focusing instead on whether or not I could be fooled, "The Village" certainly meets the criteria. He got me. Again.

True to the Director's Style
I read several reviews before seeing this movie and they pretty muched summed up to the movie being fair to pretty good. I saw a few really neagtive ones as well. I went to the movie with an open mind and waqs glad that I did. I will have to say that the director was very true to his style. I belive that a lot of people who gave the movie poor ratings came to see it with many preconceived notions of what it would be. I must admit when I first saw the trailers I classified it as a scary movie that would take place in the late 18th century. The beauty of the story is that it is much more than what it appears and the director is very successful in tying together many intricate details into a seemless plot that takes a person's perception of reality on a roller coaster ride. I feel that if the same people who gave this movie a bad review were to have simply sat back and let the story unfold before them rather than coaxing into a direction they thought it should go then they would have enjoyed all that it had to offer. The plot and story is very original and I recommend it for both its ambiance and story.

The Village
I liked it.

The more I thought about the film & discussed it @ 2am afterwards, and the days that followed (actors, scenes & story) the more I liked it. Initially, I wanted to be scared more, ...alone in the woods? At night? Breaking twigs? FEAR itself.

The cool thing about this film is that I remained scared even after a fear-defeating moment. (This is probably the most important aspect of the film and what makes it a winner in my book!)

The monsters, or bad-guys, are amazing!

M. Night seems to pick genre's well:
"The Sixth Sense" was about ghosts - if you don't like or believe or are scared of them the movie won't have the same effect (discounting the whole "trick" ending that everyone seemed to love). The same goes for "Unbreakable" relating to comic books/superheroes. And the aliens in "Signs".

If you aren't frightened by the concept then the movie losses something. If the woods at night doesn't scare you, you won't enjoy the "punch".

The audience had mixed feelings, (with one group of young teenage boys loudly voicing their disdain: "Boo! That sucked" etc., but they most likely expected a thriller.), but I will be front line center for M. Night's next film.