(Spoilers below — proceed with caution)
Like all other Halloween enthusiasts, every spooky season I compile a watchlist of horror and horror adjacent flicks to get ramped up for the holiday. One consisting of new entries into the genre, old blind spots, and of course familiar favorites.
Once of my favorites to revisit in recent years has been M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village from 2004. At times it feels like a controversial choice of something to revisit considering how the film has divided film fans since the days of its release.
Plagued by the success of his first two films, The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, Shyamalan was burdened with the expectation of being a master of suspense and horror for a new age. And particularly one who would wow audiences with brilliant twists like the one that made The Sixth Sense an international sensation.
Those unfair expectations are the main source of criticism for The Village. Most audience members agree that the first half or two-thirds of the movie are pretty enjoyable and undeniably well made. Where folks take issue is in the reveal that the story doesn’t actually take place in the late 19th century, but in its contemporary day early 21st century.
The Twist
Before moving forward, it’s important to note that is really the second of two major reveals or twists within the movie. The first being that the monstrous creatures inhabiting the woods surrounding the town of Covington are simply a farce made up by the village’s elders in order to keep younger townsfolk from leaving. However, this twist is met with much less animosity than the final big reveal.
Although I probably fell into the camp that the twist was dumb after my first viewing, subsequent rewatches have found me falling in love with the film – twist and all – more and more. To the point where I now firmly hold that rather than the film working in spite of its twist, that the movie’s brilliance indeed stems from our understanding of the twist.
The issue with how we understand what’s at play here is a byproduct of issues with film viewership en masse. I will concede that the twist’s presentation welcomes a host of potential plot holes and questions regarding narrative logic. But what it accomplishes so masterfully is an ability to lock in the film’s core thematic intrigue and clarify its central emotional ambitions.
Parental Protection
The Village opens with scenes of a funeral. August Nicholson (Brendan Gleeson) is burying his young son. An incredible traumatic scene in any context. But rewatching that scene with the added knowledge of the twist makes it almost unbearably difficult to watch.
Nicholson and the other town elders formed this secluded village community after they all experienced unimaginable tragedy involving their closest loved ones in the cold realities of a modern world. Covington is meant to be a sanctuary for them. A place free from the trauma that defines life in what they call “the towns”.
From the onset of the film, the elders’ ability to protect their loved ones from the harsh indifference of the world they are running from comes into question. Again, during a first watch, none of this is on your radar, let alone setting off sirens as an apparent through-line of the film’s themes.
Going forward, every decision made by characters like Edward Walker (William Hurt) and Alice Hunt (Sigourney Weaver), two of Covington’s other elders, is colored by what they are trying to hide and what they are trying to build within the confines of the village. We realize that these people are so gripped by the fear borne out their previous experiences that they have gone to extreme lengths in attempts to avoid living through anything remotely similar.
What the film is ultimately about, which is solidified by the slightly bizarre but quietly tender twist ending, is the lengths to which parents will go in order to protect their children. Along the way, it also begs the question of whether those lengths are worthwhile or entirely effective in their intended outcome.
One of the film’s most fascinating scenes doesn’t involve scares from “those we do not speak of” or a showcase of Roger Deakins’ stellar cinematography – although the film is chock full of both things, especially the latter. Instead, it surrounds a tense encounter between the village’s elders after Walker agrees to send his daughter Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard) out into the towns to retrieve medicine for Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix).
In the scene, Walker defends his decision as being in line with the innocence they vowed to foster within the Covington project, despite the fact that allowing Ivy to go is counter to the elders’ vow to never venture back to the outside world.
Conclusion
Ivy’s eventual venture through the woods is the culmination and convergence of everything wonderful about this film. As a visually impaired character, she represents the innocence the elders intend to protect. And as someone guided by blind love, she represents the strength necessary to continue their seemingly righteous cause.
If we only view things like the twists in The Village as cheap narrative tricks as opposed to a grand thematic punctuation, we continue to limit ourselves in what we’re able to experience as movie fans. There is great beauty in this film. There are moments in here as moving as anything achieved in the last 25 years of filmmaking. Much of that is thanks to the bizarre twist ending.
An ending which is one of hope. One where the absurd efforts by the village’s elders are justified. With a little help from a gracious park ranger. We see that there is still good in this world. The Village asks us where and how we choose to find it.
