HAMSTER RATING:
STARRING: Bryce Dallas Howard (Ivy Walker), Joachim Phoenix (Lucius Hunt), Adrien Brody (Noah Percy), William Hurt (Edward Walker)
DIRECTOR: M. Night Shyamalan
SYNOPSIS: All is not well in a colonial village that has mysterious creatures lurking in the woods. Timid Lucius Hunt (Phoenix) wants to risk a trek to the "towns" beyond the spooky woods, but the secretive elders will allow no one to do so, except blind Ivy (Howard) when Lucius' life is at stake.
A seesaw? Who the heck cares about a seesaw?
I paid for evil porcupine creatures!
REVIEW: Anyone whose watched episodes of "The Twilight Zone" or, heck, even "Star Trek" will be able to figure out the surprise twist of Shyamalan's The Village in about thirty minutes, and find little satisfaction in doing so. M. Night's latest suspense/thriller and first period piece lacks the genuine scariness of Sixth Sense, the quiet mystery of Unbreakable and the strangely hearwarming resolution of Signs. Instead, it's just sort of odd, with characters that fail to interest and dialogue clunkier than Attack of the Clones. Part of the problem may have been that all the previews for this film made it seem like a Pilgrim Meets Blair Witch, when it's actually more like a feature-length episode of "Outer Limits." That said, Shyamalan, admittedly, is still a decent storyteller and he sprinkles in an appreciable amount of humor (a lot of it unintentionally because the dialogue is so bad and the "creatures" look like giant porcupines in Little Red Riding Hoods). All in all, I found The Village pretty lame, but still a decent, no-brainer way to kill a Friday night.
FAVORITE SCENE: Any scene depicting one of the dead, skinned dogs. They all look like chihuahas, prompting the remark from my fellow movie-goer that the cloaked porcupine creatures "no quiero Taco Bell!" Well, I thought it was funny, anyway.
