Shyamalans Village

vasch_ro

i think wordsworth once said we murder to dissect , and all this over analysis has the same effect, there are two many movie snobs out there , how many people on this thread and have produced , written and directed their own movie which was then distributed world wide ? I think we should give a little credit where its due , it makes me sad to see people so cynical and jaded !
why can't people just go enjoy the movie make their own minds up ?
It is what it is .
Personally speaking I really really enjoyed the movie and like the thread starter
both myself and my wife discussed it all the way home, its definately one of his best . but do not let this thread influence u go and make your own mind up !!!

ixoy

vasch_ro wrote:

i think wordsworth once said we murder to dissect , and all this over analysis has the same effect, there are two many movie snobs out there , how many people on this thread and have produced , written and directed their own movie which was then distributed world wide ?

Umm writing and directing a movie is certainly no reason to praise a movie, otherwise I'd have to worship Paul W.S. Anderson Heh. Success != Quality, particularly in Hollywood. There was an interesting series of documentaries on Network 2 awhile ago talking about how Hollywood will - not often - take a chance and instead go for reliable hacks like Anderson or Steven Sommers and give them creative control. Doesn't mean they deserve respect when there's some great scripts and directors left out in the cold because they're just not a safe bet....

why can't people just go enjoy the movie make their own minds up ?
It is what it is ...but do not let this thread influence u go and make your own mind up !!!

Well quite. I saw the movie without paying any real attention to this thread and not bothering to read reviews. I still didn't like it - but it was on my own terms. You're right though, people shouldn't be influenced by what we babble here and I'm well able to enjoy a variety of movies. I just didn't like this one.

The Brigadier

The isn't really a twist in the movie it is much more of a MacGuffin, a device used by Hitchcock...Hitchcock described a MacGuffin as

"the device, the gimmick, if you will, or the papers the spies are after... The only thing that really matters is that in the picture the plans, documents or secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters. To me, the narrator, they're of no importance whatsoever."

The MacGuffin here is of no real relevence to the film other than as a device to aid in the playing out of a story....People who try and judge the film based on "spotting it coming" are missing the whole point of the film.

I loved it by the way...

jank

Shyamalan makes 'intellectual' movies for stupid people.

so if you kinda like the movie your an idiot!?

da_deadman

I'll agree with vasch_ro and ixoy here, you should see the movie and make up your own mind about it. I'm glad I didn't look at this thread until after seeing the film.

I enjoyed it. I thought the acting was very good and it was very well filmed, with some beautiful scenes. I thought Hurt, Gleeson, Phoenix and Howard were all good in it. I would recommend it to people.

doonothing

i hate hate HATED it.
so damn predictable. ugh, load of CRAP.
and i REALLY expected to like it, i love his films, especially unbreakable, but what a load of boll*cks.
FFS, im getting angry again, i was so bitterly disappointed by it.
but you should definitely go see it, its right down the middle, everyone loves it or hates it..
i HATED it.
argh

and i love plot twists and surprises, but not ones that are blatantly obvious from the start.
and the amount of people i heard in the cinema "i knew it! hahaha! what'd i tell you?!?" etc, twas terrible...

BlitzKrieg

i didnt hate it but it disapointed me.


the lack of conflict over the debate of going outside the village boarders dulled the drama alot. I mean what i love about mystery films is the conflict created by searching for the truth. This always makes so much more satisfying. Yet this film really seemed to lack any conflict and the result was i fulled numb during the events. I can understand the social reasons within the film for not having conflict between the characters but that didnt help the fact that it was not as amazing as it should have been when the final twist was revealed...

fitz

Why would there be conflict over search for truth?
They weren't searching for the truth, they believed what they had been told by the elders.

I went in not having tried to figure out the twist.
If you watched a Hitchcock movie for the first time and tried to figure out his twists from the start you come up with a set of potentials that'd contain the actual twist.
And you'd ruin the film for yourself.

As, it would appear, many people have done with The Village.

It's not a horror, it's not about the twist. The twist is just a device used to give context to the situation and the message of the film. As all of his films to date have been.

If you go to one of his films expecting a big suprising twist film, you're going to be disappointed.

monkeyfudge

I really think Shaymalan could make a better film if he could just stop with the bloody stupid twists. I tend to start out liking all his films, but as they go on they become increasingly ludicrous in order to accommodate needless twist ending.

And I also came out of the cinema feeling like I'd just watched an episode of the Outer Limits. I'm pretty sure the Outer Limits even did a show with a very similar storyline... or maybe it was an episode of Scooby Doo...

and:

I couldn't help thinking about the episode of Father Ted with the lovely sheep competition. And the Sheep is getting freaked out by strange sounds, but it's really just a BBC Sound Effects LP playing up in a tree as part of rouse to fix the competition. Did the Village elders have a bunch of record players stuck up the trees somewhere? It didn't quite go into detail on that one.

fitz

Jesus, the twist isn't the pay-off with these films...I can't understand why people won't accept that...

The twist is just a way of holding off on making you think about the theme he wants to address, the questions he wants to ask of the audience.

Were the Elders justified? Were they merely creating another form of destructive/suppresive society? Them being the monsters was symbolic of the point made when you realise why they did so...there manipulation of the younger generations could be considered monsterous. It's a reflection on how far we are willing to go for what we consider to be right...or how no matter how good our intentions are, we're human at the end of the day, and the best of intentions can lead to/cause actions that are abhorent.

If you didn't like the way he went about addressing these themes, fine.
You don't have to like the movie.
But see it for what it is, not as a horror film with a twist that you have to figure out before the person sitting next to you to show how obvious it is, or how much of a Soze-spotter you are...

Buried_alive

Sorry I do not agree wz most of you.... I found the movie one of the worst I've seen lately..What happens to this guy ???? He was one of the most talented filmmakers and now he makes that ????

I need 2 days to see the film coz I felt slept twice..The film is very sloooow wz no rythem, the caracters are hilarious, superficials with no real presence...Adrian Brody plays one of the worst roles in his career... The film lacks of sense, and you only stand all this crap in order to see the final and famous Shyamalans' twist.....

Cheers

ixoy

fitz wrote:

The twist is just a way of holding off on making you think about the theme he wants to address, the questions he wants to ask of the audience.

But it clearly didn't work as a device, did it? The amount of people complaining about that demonstrates that. It's not up to people to get what Shaymalan wants us to see - he should be capable of doing it for us. By using his "twist" formula, he actually serves to detract from the story at hand because we're constantly focused ahead trying to see it (or so it has happened with some).
Personally, I found the story at hand equally dull and uninspired and the themes delivered with as much subtlety as if he had written them in forty foot high letters on the sky.

see....

It's a reflection on how far we are willing to go for what we consider to be right...or how no matter how good our intentions are, we're human at the end of the day, and the best of intentions can lead to/cause actions that are abhorent.

And to that? Zzz. It's themes like this that hsows like the Outer Limits, etc. have already explored. After all science fiction is often just a vehicle for us to pose questions, and create situations, that can't be done in the current "real" world. These questions are mostly about the nature of humanity (e.g. Bladerunner) or higher spiritual concepts.
The themes addressed in 'The Village' were uninteresting (I've honestly been more enthused when the likes of 'Doctor Who' did it decades ago) and filled with a whiff of indulgence.... But I've ranted enough about these movies in a few pages back and said why I disliked it besides the twist.

But see it for what it is, not as a horror film with a twist that you have to figure out before the person sitting next to you to show how obvious it is, or how much of a Soze-spotter you are...

Yes but he's marketed himself as such and the movie is being sold as a horror. Now that's a fault of studio executives and Shaymalan's past movies but you can hardly be surprised that people aren't getting what they expect...

fitz

Ixoy, I totally see where you're coming from.
I liked the way he handled the themes, and just because they've been addressed by something else doesn't make them less valid or worthy for me. (Star Wars addressed much of the same themes as LotR did...the difference one person can make, friendship and love, nature versus industry, etc...Lucas ripped off a lot from Tolkiens books. Doesn't mean it's any less worth addressing, or less interesting)
If that's not the case for you, fine. Brilliant. If we all thought it was great, that'd be fairly boring.

While he is still using his "twist formula", if people haven't copped on to the fact that the twist is a device yet, after seeing his previous films, that's their fault, not his. 4 films so far, and not one of them was about the twist.

The amount of people complaining is a direct result of people not understanding why he's using that twist. For them, it's all about going to see a film that's gonna have this out of the blue, totally shocking twist. And if they didn't enjoy it as a result, it's cause they've gone in with a pre-conception that's gonna ruin it for them.

But at this stage, people should be realising that what he's doing is taking the themes from the B-movies and serials that he would have grown up watching, and addressing them in his way.

While I'm not accusing you of this Ixoy (you've already stated why you didn't like it and that's fair enough), I think a lot of the dissatisfaction here is stemming from people boxing themselves into an idea of what they're going to see, and being closed-minded.

I avoided reviews, etc.
I went in expecting nothing but tension, and was open to let the film go where it was gonna go.
As a result, I wasn't disappointed that I hadn't seen the "horror with a twist" that so many people are bitching about.

WhiteWashMan

as usual, i enjoyed this film. but hey, it was entertaining.

i truely feel sorry for everyone who feels the need to disect every frame of every shot, in order it seems, to find fault...