‘The Village’ (2004) is the second film by M. Night Shymalan (I love saying that name) that severely disappoints. ‘ Signs’ (C- grade) a movie with two major themes that are never complete or satisfying and where the design of the alien was the main good thing about the film (which we didn’t see enough of) became a blockbuster despite its limitations. I don’t think the same fate awaits ‘The Village’ (or maybe it will. I just read it had a 50 mil opening weekend. I feel like a sucker. I'm I caught up in some giant marketing machine that got me to go see this crap. I won't let it happen next time I see a film).
‘The Village’ is about how village elders keep a village safe and secure from that what is outside of the village by isolating it (is that vague enough?).
A crisis develops when one of the members of the village is injured and someone must go outside the village and through the woods were the monstrous others live to retrieve some medicine from another town.
As I sat there for the first thirty to forty minutes I had the overwhelming desire to jump from the top row of seats over twenty something other rows of seats to the ground floor in that stadium seating theater and sprint it out of there.
I hung in there though struggling to keep my feet firmly planted on the ground and keeping myself from pulling my hair out as I watched this boring and not scary spectacle.
Luckily the plot of the story did become a little more interesting as it moved along but still it did not deliver a good and logical story and more importantly it did not scare (which ‘Signs’ on very rare occasions did).
There are some surprises in the movie but they’re not much of a ‘pay off’ based upon how the movie is being advertised. I think most will be extremely disappointed by this story unless you go into it thinking thriller and not horror, monster or ghost story.
The logical gaps are huge and many. Unlike ‘Signs’ the story develops main themes but the structure is full of holes and totally not believable. For instance the reaction of the ranger to the woman in search of medicine for her beau is totally unbelievable. Why would the village elders risk so much by sending the young blind woman out into the woods with two other ignorant of the truth young men from the village? Why would a village elder send his blind daughter out at all when one of the elders who know the reality could more stealthily retrieve the medicine? There is no nearby town we find out so where was the elder actually sending his daughter (to a ranger outpost?)?
The last great film made by Shymalan was ‘The Sixth Sense’ (1999, grade A) and he has not gotten back to that quality of work since. I hope he finds his way soon (at least to the C grade level- nothing wrong with C). How many of these stinkers can one take from this director?
Almost all directors have a few not very good films but not all at the beginning of their career. Shymalan has not made that many movies but the majority of the films he has made suck.
‘The Sixth Sense’ is beginning to look more and more like a fluke, beginner’s luck or something.
A movie that is totally unwatchable gets an F grade but one that I make it to the end usually receives a better grade. I give the movie ‘The Village’ a D for almost chasing me out of the theater but a + for being kind of unique (but poorly thought out) as far as the story is concerned. ‘The Village’ receives a grade of D+.
I think a person can definitely wait until this one comes out on DVD/video or television but that is if one wants to see it at all. Believe me, if you never see it you won’t be missing much.
CGI And Movies: Computer generated images cannot completely fool me yet because of several factors. The movements of the images do not behave as if the laws of physics apply.
I guess that’s why they use CGI in many instances because they want to show something extraordinary like ‘Catwoman’ swiftly jumping from roof to roof or scurrying down the side of a building in yellow jump suit or dinosaurs walking or running across an open field but in any case I’m able to identify computer made special effects.
Another giveaway is the type of filtering used. A lot of CGI shops use heavy dark filtering to cover up possible flaws in the images or to make the generated images appear ‘more real’ in their opinion. ‘The Lord Of The Rings’ series of movies are a good example of this technique.
In my view this makes stuff look unreal but I guess to some it is good enough for an illusion.
One of the most important ways I can tell that an image is computer generated is that it lacks depth. This is hard to describe but the image appears to be less than solid or to be lacking density (I think the term density is more precise than depth).
Any one of the mentioned characteristics alone or in combination enables one to tell if something is CGI.
CGI is most affective when it is combined with a real background like when what you see is half CGI and half real.
I don’t just mean placing a CGI into a real image. I mean using CGI more like an extension of the shot or real images one takes. Like if you have a photo of a field with trees you may add more similar trees.
As of this date the best use of CGI in my opinion was in ‘Star Wars: Episode II Attack Of The Clones’ (2002, B+ grade) but even in this movie I was able to tell what was CGI and what was not most of the time.