The Village<\/em> came out, we were all expecting it to have a twist, too. And, boy, does it have one\u2026whether it\u2019s good or not, though, is debatable. In fact, when I saw this movie on opening weekend with my friends, my buddy leaned over to me and whispered, \u201cI bet this is taking place in our time,\u201d and I said, NO WAY.<\/p>\nBut, yes, way, because that\u2019s exactly what the twist is. Once you know that, it totally destroys the rest of the movie. All of the events leading up to that reveal feel meaningless when you are aware that it\u2019s all a lie. Unlike Signs<\/em>, where I now take great value in the deeper meanings of faith and guilt found in the film, I get none of that with The Village<\/em>.<\/p>\nAll of the effort that went into creating this setting feels wasted, and it\u2019s actually pretty frustrating. Even so\u2026<\/p>\n\n\nCredit: Buena Vista Pictures Distribution<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
It\u2019s Not All Bad, Though. The Acting Is Actually Much Better Than I Remember It Being<\/h2>\n Another thing I remember when I first saw this movie was being unimpressed by Bryce Dallas Howard, who I hadn\u2019t seen in anything prior to this film. She plays a visually impaired woman, and I remember thinking that she wasn\u2019t pulling it off very well. However, upon a rewatch, she\u2019s actually very good. It\u2019s the little things that I didn\u2019t catch upon my first viewing, like how her distant stare really does give the impression of visual impairment that I guess I overlooked the first time. So, that\u2019s my bad.<\/p>\n
The other acting is excellent as well. Adrien Brody plays a man with a developmental disability, and when he ends up stabbing Lucius with a knife, you feel both upset by his actions but also sad for his character. It\u2019s mostly all in the eyes. Joaquin Phoenix, as always, gives an earnest performance, and you get a sense that he genuinely believes he\u2019s doing the right thing by disobeying the elders, which includes his mother (Sigourney Weaver).<\/p>\n
Speaking of the elders, William Hurt and Brendan Gleeson do a superb job of showing the lengths they would go through to maintain the lie, and I think that if anything, this movie is even more infuriating because the acting in it feels like it goes to waste once the truth is revealed.<\/p>\n
So, in that way, if this one movie has any highlights, it\u2019s definitely the performances.<\/p>\n\n\nCredit: Buena Vista Pictures Distribution<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
All The Same, I Think The Village Signaled The End Of Shyamalan\u2019s Hot Streak<\/h2>\n You can try to tell me otherwise, but I was there, man. I remember. The Sixth Sense<\/em>, Unbreakable<\/em>, and Signs<\/em> were the talk of the town when they came out, but The Village<\/em>? Well, it kind of fell flat. Sure, it made A LOT of money ($256.7 million worldwide, which was down from the $408 million that Signs<\/em> made), but I remember audience reception being not as rosy as it was for the other three films.<\/p>\nThen we got Lady in the Water<\/em> (which again, I like!). Then The Happening<\/em> (Oh, God!), followed by The Last Airbender<\/em> (Great mother of mercy!). So, in a lot of ways, The Village<\/em> signaled the beginning of the end for Shyamalan. That\u2019s not to say that he hasn\u2019t made a well-received film since. In fact, Shyamalan is fascinating in that every time you think he\u2019s done for, he pops up with The Visit<\/em>, or Split<\/em>, or even Trap<\/em>, which I actually like a lot. That said, The Village<\/em> definitely seemed like the movie that cooled the red-hot streak that he\u2019d been on.<\/p>\nWhich is why I really hoped that a rewatch would change that perception for me, but nope. I still feel the same, and might actually dislike it more going into it knowing the twist. Is it a bad movie? No. It\u2019s perfectly competent. But, is it a masterpiece like The Sixth Sense<\/em>, Unbreakable<\/em>, or Signs<\/em>? Not even close.<\/p>\nStill, if he keeps making movies, I\u2019ll keep seeing them. His next one <\/a>is based on an idea by Nicholas Sparks and is titled Remain<\/em>, so we\u2019ll see how that goes.<\/p>\nAre you a fan of The Village<\/em>? I\u2019d love to hear your thoughts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Credit: Touchstone Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures M. Night Shyamalan. Whether you love his movies or loathe them, he is a director who will evoke at least some emotion out of you if you\u2019re a fan of motion pictures. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2275702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[406588,308287,440594,401611,368740],"class_list":["post-2275701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-buena-vista-pictures","tag-m-night-shyamalan","tag-the-village","tag-touchstone-pictures","tag-walt-disney-pictures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/I-Rewatched-M-Night-Shyamalans-The-Village-Hoping-To-Like.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2275701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2275703,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275701\/revisions\/2275703"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2275702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2275701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2275701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2275701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}