The Village

If you were already harbouring suspicions that M. Night Shyamalan was something of a one-trick pony, due to his penchant for low-key, compact dramas with surprise endings, it's unlikely that his latest, the self-penned The Village, will do much to assuage those reservations.

Set in the late 1800s, the village of the title is a small, self-sufficient rural community, which is surrounded by a vast forest. Part of the reason for this isolationism is because the surrounding woods are the domain of spooky, red-hooded monsters. (Or as the townsfolk refer to them as 'Those We Don't Speak Of'.) This close-habitation is uneasy one, as the villagers, unofficially led by the sombre Edward Walker (Hurt), have established a series of strange yet effective rules to ensure that the monsters do not encroach upon their territory. Though the threat of the beasts is omni-present, a young man, Lucias Hunt (Phoenix), wants to temporarily leave, in order to help the town progress...

To divulge much more of the actual plot would be unfair but The Village, like all of M. Night Shyamalan's work since his breakthrough, The Sixth Sense (1999), is a stoic, well-rendered picture with low rent philosophical pretensions. Indeed, the narrative of The Village appears to be solely designed to accommodate the director's signature twist ending, except this time not only is it ridiculous (some will see it as ridiculously obvious); but more troublingly, the underlying message is frighteningly conservative, bordering on the dogmatic. It's a shame for when he gets down to the nuts and bolts of manufacturing suspense and tension, Shyamalan is a skilled filmmaker. A sequence in which the monsters invade the village is handled masterfully, and Roger Deakins' cinematography is elegantly assured. Still, Shyamalan's ultimate reliance on formulas that have served him in the past are producing ever-diminishing returns and he's in need of some fresh inspiration.