REVIEWED - THE VILLAGE: M. Night Shyamalan's latest is an austere, stylish creepfest for most of the distance, writes Michael Dwyer
'If you go down to the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise," according to the opening lines of The Teddy Bears' Picnic. However, if your woodlands guide is M. Night Shyamalan, the writer-director of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs, you're already expecting to be surprised.
His new spooky movie depicts a reclusive, close-knit community living in a remote Pennsylvania village surrounded by woods that are regarded as forbidden territory.
The film opens with all the villagers gather for a funeral, as one of the elders (Brendan Gleeson) mourns the death of his young son. The boy's tombstone informs us that the year is 1897.
"We are grateful for the time we have been given," another elder (William Hurt) gravely intones as they gather for a communal meal. They appear content to be self-sufficient, supporting each other in an ostensibly idyllic world where money never changes hands.
Their children are raised in a climate of fear and superstition, which suggests an allegory for post-9/11 America. They are admonished never to enter the woods, which are populated by predatory creatures, and there are several warning signs: the skinned carcasses of dead animals, fleeting glimpses of red-cloaked figures, and most ominously, red streaks painted on the villagers' doors, a symbol that potently evokes the Biblical story relating King Herod's massacre of all first-born males.
Within this broader canvas lies an emotional triangle involving young villagers - a blind, ethereal innocent (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her suitors, one taciturn and noble (Joaquin Phoneix), the other a mischievous simpleton (Adrien Brody). In her first major role, Howard fits comfortably within the movie's formidable ensemble cast.
The resolution of these intriguing, overlapping strands is the weakest link in a movie that earlier packs a much more startling revelation, one staged with deceptive subtlety and when audiences probably least expect it. This, I assure you, is giving nothing away, and is in keeping with Shyamalan's rigorously formal adoption of the classic Gothic horror movie as his template.
Eschewing the blatantly obvious trappings of slasher movies and winking horror parodies, he has produced his most stylishly achieved movie to date, beautifully captured in painterly compositions by lighting cameraman Roger Deakins, and steeped in atmosphere. It's all the more unfortunate, then, given the disappointment of the denouement, that The Village ultimately proves to be a triumph of form over substance.
