'Village' wastes talents

Shyamalan's extra twist ruins the cast's symmetry.
By BETSY PICKLE
SCRIPPS HOWARD
It doesn't take a village to figure out what's wrong with writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village." Shyamalan built his houses of straw, and now the big, bad wolf of logic is here to blow them down.
This isn't the first time the creator of "The Sixth Sense" and "Signs" has made a dud. People still take pains to avoid his first commercial feature, "Wide Awake," and Bruce Willis should feel that he settled his "Sixth Sense" debt with "Unbreakable."
But this is the first instance where Shyamalan has failed at the type of movie he knows how to make. It isn't just that everyone's looking for his trademark twist (and if you don't see it coming at least halfway through, schedule an appointment with an ophthalmologist). It's that he throws in an extra twist that sabotages both his narrative and his cast's symmetry.
The plot
The eponymous community is a small 19th-century settlement surrounded by deep woods. Though the residents seem happy, they know pain, suffering and death. In fact, the film begins with a boy's funeral -- an event that hints at the boundaries accepted by the village.
As it turns out, the woods are off limits thanks to a tacit agreement the villagers have with the mysterious, fierce creatures that inhabit the untamed territory. The elders dubbed the creatures "Those We Don't Speak Of," which is Shyamalan's lame, ungrammatical tribute either to H. Rider Haggard's She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed or J.K. Rowling's Voldemort.
The villagers assign a nightly lookout to a watchtower, but basically they know the creatures will leave them alone as long as they stay out of the woods and don't display the forbidden color: red.
Though he's shy about speaking up, Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) is respected as a leader in the younger set. Lucius stirs things up when he suggests that it might be worth the risk to cross through the forest to a town for medical supplies that are beyond the village's ability to produce.
Widow Alice Hunt (Sigourney Weaver), one of the village elders, is proud of her son, and elder Edward Walker (William Hurt) admires his courage. But it's Edward's daughter, blind Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard), who has the greatest sense of Lucius' potential.
Unfortunate error
The decision Shyamalan makes less than an hour into "The Village" is the fatal error. Not only does it cause a rift in the film's emotional energy, but it also sparks such a breakdown in logic that it's impossible not to see what his bigger twist is.
All the fine performances -- and there are several -- can't mend the damage in the director's screenplay. That's too bad, because Phoenix is wonderful as tongue-tied Lucius, and newcomer Howard makes Ivy intriguing.
There's also a rich undercurrent between Hurt and Weaver. In general, however, Shyamalan isn't up to his usual standard at creating vivid characters. Oscar winner Adrien Brody is wasted as mentally challenged Noah, who in less politically correct times would have been known as the village idiot, and supporting players Brendan Gleeson, Cherry Jones, Celia Weston and Michael Pitt are just so much scenery.
Shyamalan's inspiration appears to be a career choice he didn't make. Aside from a few jumps, "The Village" is empty of thrills.