The Village
The village is one of Shymalan's more hotly disputed movies, with many fans and critics alike considering it either one of his best works or among his worst. The film takes place in a secluded village in which the elders have made a pact with mysterious creatures in the surrounding forest. When that pact is violated, the creatures once again haunt the village. And piece by piece, the village's mysterious secrets are uncovered. Also, everything I just said may be a lie, because well, it's a Shymalan movie.
The first things worth noting are the visuals and sound. The cinematography is some Shymalan's finest. And while some scenes of village life look like cliches taken straight from greeting cards, the art direction, from sets to costumes and everything else, feels vibrant and realistic. The music is effective at maintaining intrigue and hitting the right emotional cues. So luckily, while everything else about The Village ranges from seriously to irredeemably flawed, the movie's at least admirable on a superficial level.
The dialogue never feels authentically period. Everyone delivers overly formal lines in a strange quasi-British accent, like the kind you're used to hearing in bad fantasy or historical movies. William Hurt sounds especially cringe-worthy as village elder Edward Walker, who speaks in a stonerish monotone like an 18th century version of Jeff Bridges' the dude. And watching the movie it's obvious that most of the cast doesn't know how to handle the awkward dialogue. The result is a lot of great acting talent, like Joacquin Phoenix and Sigourney Weaver, being completely squandered. While the end of the movie somewhat justifies this, it makes it no less irritating to sit through.
The worst case of squandered talent is Adrien Brody as Noah, a villager suffering from severe mental retardation (I mean this in its most literal sense and no other). While there's nothing inherently wrong with that, his character has no personality outside of his disability. Nearly everything he does in the movie can be summed up with the phrase "Because he doesn't know any better," which is lazy writing on top of lazy characterization. It's obvious that Brody's character was nothing more than a cheap plot device; things that no logical person would do had to happen to avance the story. And that alone speaks volumes about the story. It's a shame that Brody followed up The Pianist with this. For the future, Shymalan would do well to remember Robert Downey Jr.'s advice in Tropic Thunder.
Because of some awkward acting, poor and an oddly paced script that seems to meander when it's not moving toward the inevitable twist, most of the movie comes off as simply boring. None of the relationships between the characters have any real emotional drama, and the romantic subplots ultimately go nowhere. While the setup for the monsters is mildly interesting, they're never very scary and the one confrontation with one feels like a complete disappointment.
The plot twist is admittedly a clever one, but it makes the rest of the movie feel like a 100 minute long set-up for a twist. Shymalan seems to have forgotten what made his definitive plot twist great, so it ends up feeling more like something you'd expect at the end of a Saw seqel rather than the culmination of an intriguing plot. It also leads to a few plot holes, although nothing as obvious as in Signs.
The Village doesn't quite get everything wrong, but considering the talent involved and the reputation that Shymalan's name used to carry, the movie is nothing short of a complete disappointment.
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Lady in the Water:
What's impressive about M. Night Shymalan is that even as his movies do worse critically and commercially, he only gets more ambitious with each movie he makes. This time around his goal was to make a movie that abandons common storytelling structure and conventions, which is no small feat. I can safely say that he accomplishes this challenging goal, but at the obvious price one pays for doing away with a logical plot structure.
Lady in the Water follows the residents of an apartment building who, piece by piece, discover their roles in a modern-day fairy tale. The unconventional plot feels somewhat like a bedtime story or even a modern-day take on Arabian Nights. In other words, it's a lively and original plot, except that it hardly feels like a plot at all. There's not much causality between events and minor plot twists come out of nowhere. In other words, it feels like Shymalan is making the story up as he goes along. This fairy tale involves characters with ridiculous names like Narfs (water nymphs from the long-forgotten blue world, not to be confused with the noise made by a genetically altered lab mouse) Scrunts (scary looking dog creatures that couldn't possibly have a less intimidating name) and the Tartutic (a triumvirate of evil monkeys.) Needless to say, it's all a little hard to take seriously, but if that's not a problem for you, then you might have some fun watching this movie.
Once again I can't help but praise the visuals and sound. The monsters, as laughable as they might be in concept, all look believably scary. The movie's few action scenes are fast and instense. There's one particularly well-done jump scare, I won't say where, that's perfectly executed and doesn't feel cheap at all. Any viewers with good sound systems will appreciate the amount of realism and creepiness. that the sound gives to the movie.
The cast is decent all-around. Paul Giamatti is likable as superintendant Cleveland Heep, capturing the qualities that make a regular guy heroic without ever being too overt about it. Bryce Dallas Howard is equally likable as Story, one of the previously mentioned narfs, and the center of the fairy tale the characters find themselves in. She makes her character's ridiculous backstory somewhat believable, which is quite the challenge in itself. A lot of the side characters are interesting at face value or for short periods of time, but never feel fully developed. Shymalan himself plays an aspiring writer who develops an annoying messiah complex about a controversial book he wrote. His character is sympathetic enough in the beginning, but comes off a little too heavy-handed about his mysterious message. Bob Balaban (whom you might remember from Gosford Park and the Majestic) stands out as a film critic who offers some great comic relief and breaks the fourth wall in a very interesting way.
It's easy to find several things that don't work about Lady in The Water, but if you don't take it too seriously, it's just as easy to enjoy it as an absurd modern fairy tale.
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