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What kind of evil, exactly, lives in those woods, and what does it want?
That's the enigma at the heart of The Village, the fourth major film from M. Night Shyamalan, the ambitious director and screenwriter whose last three eerie thrillers have grossed more than $1-billion.
Shyamalan, director of the 1999 supernatural chiller The Sixth Sense and the 2002 alien-invasion melodrama Signs, gets his kicks from narrative tricks. It's no secret that the filmmaker, who turns 34 next week, loves an ingenious twist almost as much as he loves a well-told story.
The Village, starring impressive newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard and featuring a first-rate ensemble cast, succeeds on all counts: It's a cleverly paced, intelligently written, artfully photographed yarn that's refreshingly original, despite references to the mood and tone of The Blair Witch Project, episodes of The Twilight Zone and Gothic literature (the script was inspired, in part, by Shyamalan's re-reading of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights). And the film's final revelations are truly surprising, and satisfying.
Fans of The Village may return for repeat viewings, to see what they overlooked the first time. A similar phenomenon bolstered attendance of The Sixth Sense. Do believe the hype. Don't believe your eyes.
After an obligatory opening shot of black, winter-burned trees under a cloudy sky, the action begins with a graveside sequence. It's 1897, as revealed by a tombstone next to the grave of a small boy, whose father (Brendan Gleeson) is weeping, his head resting on his son's closed coffin.
The scene is gloomy, but the community's response is encouraging, as teacher Edward Walker (William Hurt) and other members of the Council of Elders offer words of solace and encouragement during a banquet on a picturesque valley lawn.
The little settlement in Pennsylvania, although isolated from "the towns" by a deep, forbidding forest, is characterized by small-town duties and pleasures, including laid-back instruction at the one-room school, unhurried rites of courtship and genteel wedding celebrations.
Walker and his red-haired daughters, lovesick Tabitha (Jayne Atkinson) and blind younger sister Ivy (Howard, daughter of director Ron), carry on quite happily, despite the tragedy in their past. So, too, do Alice Hunt (Sigourney Weaver) and her son, quiet, brooding Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix). Village idiot Noah (Adrien Brody) is allowed to be his own addled self, without harassment.
Still, something is not quite right about the place, as is related during the film's opening minutes. Two girls, sweeping a front porch, briefly take a break from their chores to frantically unroot a brightly colored flower and bury it in the ground. A cat is found dead, plucked clean of fur. Two schoolchildren talk about their fear of scary creatures. "They're meat eaters," one boy says. "They have large claws," another says.
To reveal any more about the plot, which leads into horror and romance before shooting off into an unexpected direction, would be to give away too much. Suffice it to say that like Shyamalan's previous movies, The Village isn't at all what it appears to be.
The filmmaker, to his credit, has infused The Village with intriguing philosophical questions, related to notions about idealism, utopianism, social progress, political isolationism and the lengths people will go to escape life's emotional byproducts.
"Sorrow can find you," the grieving father laments at one point. "It can smell you." One can never run far enough.
The VillageGrade: A
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson, Michael Pitt.
Screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan
Rating: PG-13; violence
Running time: 107 minutes