M Night Shyamalans - The Village
[DVD]

Description

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION Atmospheric psychological thriller directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Covington is a small rural Pennsylvanian village locked into an unusual pact: beyond the village boundaries lurk terrifying creatures, but these creatures have agreed to stay outwith the villagers' territory so long as the villagers do not enter the woods. However, this precarious arrangement is challenged when Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix), a bold and curious young man, decides to find out what lies beyond the narrow borders of his hitherto confined existence. Adrien Brody, William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver co-star. FROM AMAZON.CO.UK 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

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