A Trip to "The Village"

WARNING: Spoilers are going to abound in this post, so if you want to see this movie, and not have the "surprise" ending revealed, you should probably leave now .

The Village, for those of you currently living under a rock, is M. Night Shyamalan's latest movie. It's wide release was Friday and my dear friend Kat and I, amidst a large crowd average age of 15 (eck), attended a late viewing at our local uberplex.

After getting over the initial shock of feeling old at the respective ages of 20 (myself) and 22 (Miss Kat), we settled into our seats, all a flutter with anticipation of the artful thriller M. Night had created for us to enjoy.

What we got was an intense desire to find Mr. Shyamalan and demand our money back, lest he be subjected to bodily harm.

Granted, I had my expectations fairly high for this. I'm a pretty solid Shyamalan fan. I've seen and enjoyed most of his previous major endeavors save Unbreakable, which I have not seen and heard "eh" things about. Though, many people said the same of Signs and I thoroughly enjoyed that, plot holes and all. The cast was also very much to my liking. Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, Sigourney Weaver, all very good. To top it all off, the trailer was mighty intriguing. It looked, sounded, and felt like a great flick.

So when I ended up with an eye-full of crap, I was a wee bit upset.

But I mean COME ON!!! You had all the right ingredients man!! You wrote The Sixth Sense !!! HOW COULD YOU FUCK THIS UP?!! WHY DO YOU HATE ME?!!?!

Anyhoo . . .

It started out well. All the standard Shyamalan elements were present. Visually beautiful yet simple scenes; slow, deliberate pacing; hints of the intense, omgwhatthefuckisgoingon events to come; and . . . well, okay, no creepy kids this time. Instead you get a mentally handicapped Adrien Brody. But close enough.

The majority of the movie takes place in a tiny little village, set in late 1800's America. The opening has scenes with average village-y things going on, with little hints that something isn't quite right. Small livestock are found dead and skinned, people hide "the bad color" (or "red") whenever they find it present, and there's a funeral for a young child. And you get the clear point that the woods are a no no, because if you go in there the creatures will eat your face. Or something.

So anyhow, amidst all the hub bub about not going into the woods for fear of pissing off the creatures, you find out some key things about the village itself. It is run by a bunch of "Elders" two of which are Sigourney, who is Joaquins mum and possessor of the villages locked box o' secrets, and Head Elder Daddy William Hurt who is father to the Sassy Blind Chick played by a new actress whose name I don't feel like looking up.

Joaquin keeps trying to convince the elders to let him go into the woods to get to the towns and bring back medicine, which is another point that gets driven home.

No medicine. Nada. None whatsoever. So bitch don't even THINK about getting a cold.

He does his speech in this "I act shy and scared but am really the bravest fucker in this whole measley village" way. Elders say no, because they don't want faces eaten by said creatures. Elders are either very smart or big fat wussy heads.

Moving right along, the all important love triangle is introduced. Sassy Blind Chick is in love with Joaquin and knows he's in love with her. Joaquin is in fact in love with her, but keeping with the theme of "shy wussy boy", he keeps it to himself. Finally, we have Handicapable Adrien Brody, whom Sassy Blind Chick has been a sort of mentor/best friend to. So obviously Handicapable Adrien Brody has feelings for Sassy Blind Chick.

Then for some reason Joaquin gets the urge to walk past the boundry while he is on all important post painting duty and a creature sees him. Fortunately, it does not eat his face. (Ladies in audience, general sigh of relief)

Cut to that night. Warning bell goes off from the tower on the boundry and all hell breaks loose. You see a flash of a creature, and there are a few good jumpoutofyourseat moments.

Then M. Night goes and starts fucking up the movie and SHOWS YOU THE ENTIRE CREATURE. Which, for the record, looks like a giant hedgehog walking upright in a red cloak.

Seriously. If you thought the aliens in Signs were lame, you'll barely be able to contain yourself when you see the Doom "I'm Obviously Some Dude in a Silly Costume" Hedgehogs.

WOOOOOO FEAR THE HEDGEHOGS!! DOOM HEDGEHOGS!!! Hedgehogs of DOOOOOOOM!!!!

Granted, I'm pretty sure any intelligent person has figured out that the creature thing is most likely a farce before this scene, but seeing the Hedgehogs O' Doom completely removes all doubt.

Now that the audience knows someone is playing one hell of an April Fools joke on the villagers (and it's most likely the Village Elders), best to move the love story along, no?

The night after the Invasion of the Doom Hedgehogs, Joaquin finally grows a pair and he and the Sassy Blind Chick make plans to get hitched.

This makes Adrien Brody a saaaad panda.

The next day, Handicapable Adrien Brody stabs Joaquin for stealing his woman.

Now the big conflict arises. Sassy Blind Chick, who affirms that shecannotlivewithoutJoaquin, pleads with Head Elder Daddy Hurt, that she has to go into the woods and reach the towns in order to get the much needed medicine to help heal Joaquin. (The town Dr. informs us that the bleeding has stopped but there is an infection).

Things begin to unfold, and long story short, it's revealed that the Elders have been the Doom Hedgehogs all along (Suprise!).

Daddy Hurt tells this long story about how Sassy Blind Chicks grandfather was insanely wealthy, and he didn't judge people and only saw the kindness in them, and how someone took advantage of that trust and grandpa done got shot in the head.

Basically, all the elders think that they can protect themselves from the bad naughty things in the world by making everyone stay in the village. Apparently never having taken any sort of human psychology/behavior course which would make them realize that that is a crap theory. But whatever.

Cut to montage of important plot points.

We see Sassy Blind Chick with two escorts, both of whom, you guessed it, wuss out on her. So now the Sassy BLIND Chick is alone, traveling through woods she's never been in, by herself, with a little list of the medicines she has to bring back. And she's navigating via the sounds of the river her father told her to follow. This plan is obviously foolproof!

Meanwhile, back in the Village of Perpetual Liars, we see the Elders of Perpetual Idiocy discuss the fact that Head Elder Daddy Hurt let Sassy Blind Chick in on the big secret. So naturally, they're freaking out.

Head Elder Daddy Hurt gets on a soap box with, "we couldn't keep it going forever, blah, blah, blah, lost innocence, blah, blah, protecting that innocence blah, blah, Head Elder Daddy Hurt for your Oscar Consideration, blah, blah."

There are flashbacks back to the previous hour of Head Elder Daddy Hurt explaining things further to Sassy Blind Chick.

And present moment Sassy Blind Chick is still wandering around the woods. Alone. Still blind. In the woods she's never been in before. Blind. And alone. Okay, you get the point.

So ends the montage of important plot points.

Sassy Blind Chick starts hearing something following her. There's a spooky voiceover of Head Elder Daddy Hurt telling her that they took the idea of the creatures from actual stories about the woods.

And a creature shows up! Granted, it's still a Doom Hedgehog, but you're *almost* buying that it could be a real creature, and that M. Night just has a really crappy idea of what spooky face eating creatures living in the woods should look like.

Sassy Blind Chick of course does the logical thing and runs away, and there's a scary *oogie oogie* chase through the woods. Through a rediculously lucky series of events, she manages to kill the Doom Hedgehog.

Let's hear it for the Sassy Blind Chick!

But wait, back in the village it turns out that Handicapable Adrien Brody has broken out of the room they locked him in since the stabbing!

AND has convienantly found the Doom Hedgehog costume that the Elders of Perpetual Idiocy have hidden in the same room!

He's also apparently very stealthy as he made it out of the village in a giant Doom Hedgehog costume without anyone seeing him! Good show!

So Sassy Blind Chick has effectively killed Handicapable Adrien Brody.

Oops.

Anyway, on to Shyamalan's BIG reveal!

Sassy Blind Chick finally makes it to the end of the road and is met with...wait...is that a chain linked fence covered in vines??? Noooo, couldn't be, there's no chained linked fences in the late 1800's!

In The Village of Perpetual Lies the Elders of Perpetual Idiocy are opening one of their Locked Boxes of Super Secrets. Which contain newsclippings and pictures.

One is of the elders, standing in front of a CAR.

Oh, and one of the news clippings is a headline about how Head Elder Daddy Hurt's father was actually a billionaire. In case the whole wealthy thing didn't sink in with the long "My daddy got shot in the head" story.

Cut to...

Sassy Blind Chick, after scaling the now obvious chained link fence, hit's nothing but a paved road in the middle of Nowheresville on the other side. Luckily, an Incredibly Gullible Nature Reserve Security Guy happens to be driving by!

Okay, so, we now know that these people are living in present day, that the Elders of Perpetual Idiocy are REALLY good liars and that they're actually living on a nature reserve. Through sly placement of the name of the nature reserve we find out it was created with Head Elder Daddy Hurt's pappy's moolah. Wooboy!

Now, Incredibly Gullible Nature Reserve Security Guy is faced with a dilema.

Here's this Sassy Blind Chick, whose just come over a fence from someplace NO ONE is suppose to be. She's dressed up all pioneer times reenactment enthusiast-y and is completely filthy. And she keeps going on about how someones hurt and is trying to hand you her shopping list o' narcotics.

What to do, what to do.

Well, most likely, if you were a person in this situation you would firstly call an ambulance. For this chick clearly needs some medical attention because she appears to be a bit banged up, filthy and INSANE.

THEN you would call your superiors and try to straighten out who and where this injured person she keeps babbling on about is, get them out of the nature reserve and into medical care. That's what you would do.

Unless you're Incredibly Gullible Security Guy.

In that case, you take the Obviously Insane Sassy Blind Chicks word for it, run to the nearest security post and grab the medical supplies on the list she gave you. All of which the security post conveniently carries. And without letting your superior see you do it.

But your superior is being played by the guy who wrote the movie, so he knows you did it anyhow. And while you're there he's good enough to tell you a little story about the air space above the reserve being restricted years ago to help fill in any plot holes.

Oh, and you bring back a ladder to help her shimmy back over the fence you're suppose to be gaurding.

Then you sit in your patrol vehicle and stare in disbelief at how completely stupid and unlikely that entire scenerio was, and wonder what your superior has been smoking.

Now that the movie has passed through the realm of no logic, we get to the final scene.

All the Elders of Perpetual Idiocy are sitting in the room where Joaquin is sleeping. One of the villagers comes by and lets them know that Sassy Blind Chick has returned and has the medicine. He also tells them that she ran into one of the Doom Hedgehogs on the way and killed it. Of course the Elders of Perpetual Idiocy know that it was really Handicapable Adrien Brody and his mother bursts into tears.

Here's the second part of the movie that just sucked it. The Elders of Perpetual Idiocy realize that Sassy Blind Chick has no idea that it's modern times because she couldn't see anything while she was over the fence, and that she also now thinks that the creatures are real because she believes to have been attacked by and killed one of them. So the decision comes, do we keep telling the lie? And they all agree, yes.

The End.

Okay, I'm sorry, but that ending is just lame. Didn't we just see a few scenes ago the Elders of Perpetual Idiocy come to the realization that they can't do this forever?? And isn't the whole stabbing of Joaquin and death of Handicapable Adrien Brody proof that locking yourself away from the larger world doesn't make the naughty bad things go away??

But no, forget all that. We'll just pretend this never happened and keep up the charade. As though nothing of value was really learned in the subsequent 2 hours of this craptastic movie. Yeah, that's a good way to end this. For we truly are the Elders of Perpetual Idiocy.

And M. Night is smoking some good shit.