The Village

Year: 2004 Rating: PG-13 Overall Evaluation: 8.5 Significance Suppositions Story Style 8.0 / 10 7.0 / 10 7.0 / 10 10.0 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

Rated PG-13 for a scene of violence and frightening situations. Nothing gratuitous and nothing offensive.

Story

The movie concerns a pre-modern village hedged in by a forbidden forest protected by mysterious and malevolent creatures. Everything is fine until one of the villagers is injured and will not survive unless someone braves the dangers of the forest (as well as and the evil towns that lie beyond it) to retrieve medicinal supplies.

[SERIOUS SPOILER WARNING!]

[I mean it - if you have not seen this movie, and might wish to do so, DO NOT read any further!!!]

OK, so the lead character leaves the village with the knowledge that the monsters are fake. They are costumes the elders of the town wear to frighten the townsfolk into remaining inside the forest boundary. When the character escapes the forest we discover that it's actually present day America. The "elders" of the village are really a group who met at a counseling center for people who lost loved ones to violent crime. Blaming modern society, they agreed to the suggestion of the billionaire lead elder to create a 19th century village completely removed from modern society. The character who leaves the village is blind and the one who comes after her dies so the secret is safe upon her return.

Suppositions

Other than some plot holes and somewhat difficult-to-believe events, the film does not ask a lot from the audience. As with this director's other films (The Sixth Sense, Signs, Unbreakable) you sort of just have to deal with the weirdness until it is explained. See SPOILER section below for the rest - but only if you have seen the movie or do not care if the plot is revealed!

Significance

I think the significance of this is that society is not responsible for man's evil - man is. We are, by our natural inclinations, evil - and society simply brings us together. Evil will follow man wherever he goes until all evil is destroyed by the ultimate good (God), and those who chose to follow Him are perfected forever.

[SPOILER WARNING]

The fact that this village only exists because of lies and fear is demonstration enough of this fact, but the additional relief the elders feel when they learn of the boy's death seals it. "That boy just saved our village." How chilling! Yet the elders are not "evil" in the sense that we would like to think of them. Rather, they are merely trying to keep their loved ones from the greater evils of "the towns" (i.e. the modern world). However, they have now learned that the ideal of the utopian society is impossible in a fallen world.