The Village **WITH SPOILERS***

I saw THE VILLAGE tonight.

Whatever.

Here's Night's main innovation in film: discovering that, if you include a plot turn which, if revealed, ruins the entire effect of the movie, people will not talk about the film. Even reviewers. And you cannot criticize a film which you cannot talk about. ***So I have spoilers below***. And you know, it's not difficult to fabricate such plot twists. Good ones are hard to come by.

THE VILLAGE contains such a twist, which may have taken all of 30 seconds to come up with. So what? What do we get out of the film otherwise? A bare inspection of the nature of fear and cowardice.

The village is, actually, a village built by modern people, escaping from the modern world into a fabricated preserve, because each of them had someone they love die violently. They apparently resolved to raise their children ignorant of the outside modern world, pretending it is 1897, and enforce this by fabricated bogeymen in the surrounding woods. Every so often, they costume up at night to freak the little ones out, and make red a "forbidden" color. So when one of the boys is stabbed by the village idiot, the woman who loves him (although blind) resolves to go through the woods "to the towns" to get "some medicines". Odd that people ignorant of the outside world should somehow have faith in the quality of their medicines.

Anyhoo, her father reveals all to her before she goes, so she would not be scared. Nonetheless, in the woods, she's briefly confronted by a bogeyman ("there were stories of beasts in the woods", her father had explained), who she kills (it was the village idiot, escaped and in costume), nonetheless proving that courage can overcome fear.



In short, not nearly as good as THE SIXTH SENSE, but not as bad as UNBREAKABLE -- but close.