The Village (2004)
Average Rating: 5.5/10
Reviews Counted: 206
Fresh: 89 | Rotten: 117
The Village is appropriately creepy, but Shyamalan's signature twist ending disappoints.
Average Rating: 5.7/10
Critic Reviews: 42
Fresh: 20 | Rotten: 22
The Village is appropriately creepy, but Shyamalan's signature twist ending disappoints.
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Average Rating: 3/5
User Ratings: 423,617
My Rating
Movie Info
M. Night Shyamalan, the creative mind behind The Sixth Sense and Signs, wrote and directed this characteristically atmospheric thriller. The rustic village of Covington is a small town in rural Pennsylvania that is home to 60 souls. The citizens of Covington lead a quiet and peaceful life, but not without an unusual caveat -- terrible creatures lurk just outside the borders of the village, and the people of Covington have reached an agreement of sorts with the beasts, in which they are allowed
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Cast
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Joaquin Phoenix
Lucius Hunt -
Bryce Dallas Howard
Ivy Walker -
Adrien Brody
Noah Percy -
William Hurt
Edward Walker -
Sigourney Weaver
Alice Hunt -
Brendan Gleeson
August Nicholson -
Cherry Jones
Mrs. Clack -
Jayne Atkinson
Tabitha Walker -
Judy Greer
Kitty Walker -
Fran Kranz
Christop Crane -
Michael Pitt
Finton Coin -
Celia Weston
Vivian Percy -
John Christopher Jones
Robert Percy -
Frank Collison
Victor -
Jesse Eisenberg
Jamison -
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The Village Trailer & Photos
All Critics (207) | Top Critics (42) | Fresh (94) | Rotten (122) | DVD (44)
Dangerously dour.
Top CriticFor those who just want a good scare, rest assured the best (and worst) of it comes across as Wait Until Dark meets The Blair Witch Project.
Shyamalan, far from being a master of suspense, hasn't yet figured out that the shadowy things you glimpse out of the corner of your eye are always scarier than those you're allowed to gaze upon directly.
Another mediocre lunacy from the overrated M. Night Shyamalan.
So meaningless and distanced in its details that it hardly stands a chance of wooing even the most willing fellow traveler.
The Village doesn't pack quite the punch of The Sixth Sense, but it's equal to Shyamalan's last two films.
Thought-provoking thriller too intense for some.
Gripping, creepy, and very well acted with a great breakout performance from Bryce Dallas Howard...
M. Night Shyamalan keeps the story vague enough to work up to his plot twist, and while I won't reveal it here, I will say that I don't think the payoff is worth it.
Shyamalan remains ever the master of mood and of unseen, inchoate menace; he can give depth and gravity to scenes that in other hands would be either boring or ridiculous.
The Village is not completely awful, but it comes closer than one would like to admit.
The would-be surprise only makes you rethink the reason you went to see the movie in the first place.
Village idiot.
If you're willing to follow Shyamalan wherever he goes in his inquiry into how the US got so terrorism-fixated, he leads you into provocative, if uneven, territory.
In a time when Hollywood is more interested in remakes and sequels than in original movies, Shyamalan continues to tell new stories. And he's really good at it.
I'm not sure exactly why I'm protecting the Shocking Twist, because it certainly doesn't deserve to be protected.
It's hard to care about situations that have been designed only to obscure the ultimate twist.
Picturesque, slightly haunting but silly in a frustrating way.
Audience Reviews for The Village
Super Reviewer
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- Edward Walker: The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
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- Lucius Hunt: Are you upset you can't see?
- Ivy Walker: I see the world Lucius Hunt, not as you see it.
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- Lucius Hunt: Are you upset you can't see?
- Ivy Walker: I see the world Lucius Hunt, not as you see it.
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- Ivy Walker: Sometimes we don't do things we want to do so that others won't know we want to do them.
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- Lucius Hunt: There are different types of love.
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- Christop Crane: She's not going to squeeze my shirt like that, is she?
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Foreign Titles
- The Village - Das Dorf (DE)
- The Village (2004) (CA)
Shyamalan's career as a filmmaker has indeed been very impressive in past ten years. It would be understatement to say that Shyamalan's work as a director is highly underrated. It has possibly always been. Maybe his belief and ability to create emotionally powerful fairytales just makes him a easy target for cynical critics and audiences to bash him. For me he seems to become one of the unique storytellers and directors of our times. His films often deal with love, loss, grief, hope, with touches of supernatural and horror. The Village is not an exception with it's highly original subject matter. It has beautiful moments of joy and love, and equally effective moments of pure shock and horror. Somehow Shyamalan succeeds always to meld these elements into something completely unique and wholly of his own.
In The Village we can see some intentional echoes of other fairytales like Red Riding Hood in it. Shyamalan likes to inject these kind of elements into his stories just to remind us that the line between real life and fairytales is thin in his films.
With The Village Shyamalan makes also a brilliant use of forest and turns it into something truly brooding and enchanting. With fantastic support of photographer Roger Deakins he finds a beautiful menace from the woods of Philadelphia where this film was shot. I would even say that the woods itself becomes a character here. A place of surreal soundscape and twisted brances, that gets underneath your skin with it's eerie atmosphere and looks.
One of the biggest discoveries of this film is clearly the brilliant debut performance from gifted actress Bryce Dallas Howard whose blind and goodhearted Ivy Walker becomes the unexpected hero of the story. Her performance is truly powerful to watch. Most of the film's touching moments are involved to her acting and the emotional power she brings in them.
The Village is a carefully constructed work of art. In Shyamalan's filmography it stands as his best work along with his Lady in the Water. Here is a film which has special kind of eerie atmosphere.
For people who are able to keep their mind open this is a film that will offer one of a kind experience to see something original and haunting. The Village show us Shyamalan working on top of his game. He has made some great films before The Village and there is no doubt that he will continue making them in the future, but it is hard to imagine that he will top The Village ever.