M. Night Shyamalan was already starting to lose his good graces with me when this movie came out. If you follow my stuff I recently reviewed a film of his that I really enjoyed, the first in a while. The Village was not one of the ones I enjoyed.
The story is set in Covington Pennsylvania in the 19th century where a group of villagers live a simple life but they cannot leave the small village that they live in out of fear of gruesome creatures that live just outside of it. These creatures are attracted to the color red and turned off by yellow. It is not explained why it just is so.
No one ever leaves the village and there are also guard towers on the outskirts that must be manned at all hours to keep a lookout for them. For the most part the creatures leave the villagers alone provided they stay inside the confines of Covington.
The creatures are further kept at bay by maintaining a yellow border on all the trees surrounding the area. Basically they spend a lot of time with yellow and fear anything that is red. It's intriguing for a little while. Everything seems to be going just fine until someone needs some medicine that the village does not have and some of the brave inhabitants want to attempt to venture to the next town despite the dangers of the creatures.
I'll just leave it at that. The film has a star-studded lineup including Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, William Hurt, and Sigourney Weaver. The movie stays reasonably interesting but there is just one problem (and i would appreciate it if you didn't spoil it in the comments in case someone would actually like to see the movie): The "twist" that is the trademark of all M Night's films was extremely predictable in this one.
Like most of M. Night Shyamalan stuff, this movie made an absolute fortune at the box office, but both critics and fans were a bit upset about this one. I include myself in this grouping.