Mad, Beautiful Ideas
The Village

If you're thinking of visiting M. Knight Shyamalan''s "The Village", I'd suggest waiting until it's cheaper. For those of you who haven't been following the buzz on this film, it centers around the 19th century New England village of Covington. The Village is only a few decades old, founded by the eight elders of this village. When the built the village, they made a pact with the creatures that live in the woods that surround their village, that they would stay out of the woods, if the creatures stay out of the Village.

The creatures haven't entered the Village in many years, but the noises from the woods serve as a constant reminder not to enter. A local retarded boy is discovered to have entered on multiple occasions, and Lucius (Joauqin Pheonix), decides that since he was safe due to his innocence, Lucius may be able to travel through the woods to visit the towns to get medicine to help the people of the Village. The elders are unwilling to give Lucius permission, however.

With the generic plot summary aside, this movie was a huge letdown. The dialouge felt pretty lousy, and due to this the acting was amazingly bad. Due to how forced everything was, it was almost impossible to get drawn into the story. In addition, the 'twist' the Shyamalan is known for was really uninteresting, and almost cliched. It wasn't necessarily given away until it was meant to be, but it wasn't really a surprise either.

Since I don't want to give away the secret to this film, I'll leave my review at this point. The acting was lousy, the script was worse, and the story wasn't very intriguing. The environments looked good, and the cinematography was alright.

2/5 - I wouldn't suggest you watch this film in the theater.