9) The Village (2004)
It is no mistake that our list includes two M. Night Shyamalan films. Never has a filmmaker started so high and managed to fall so low in the creation of exciting, frightening thrillers with sub-par monsters at the heart. What’s most maddening about Shyamalan’s works is that they begin with such promise and end with such stupidity. But few films have angered me more than The Village.
The film introduces us to an intriguing premise: it takes place in a small 19th Century village whose inhabitants are unable to venture beyond the borders for fear of strange and evil creatures, referred to only as Those We Don’t Speak Of, who live in the surrounding woods. The governing council of elders attempt to keep peace among their children, but trouble is afoot when disease threatens the villagers. Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix) asks permission to travel through the woods to find medical supplies at the towns beyond. The creatures are apparently angry at the invasion of their privacy and seem to warn the villagers not to venture into the woods again.
[zergpaid]The Village has all the earmarks of a truly scary folktale, down to the “don’t go into the woods” theme and creepy setting. But as with too many Shyamalan films, the reveal of the “truth” about the creatures in the woods demonstrates both a lack of narrative consistency and the filmmaker’s love of jerking his audience around.
The action actually takes place in the 21st Century, the village was constructed by the “elders” as a refuge from the evils of the modern world, and the creatures were created as a story to frighten the children. This is all conceived in an attempt to allegorize the fear-mongering following 9/11, but the twist is at once stupid and predictable, making the the audience feel as though they have been deliberately duped by a filmmaker who thinks he’s clever. Scary creatures living in the woods? Brilliant. Old people in costumes? Not so much.