**************The Village Spoilers******************
I hate spoiler warnings - I like to surprise people. But I was attacked last time; it seems people don't like surprises.
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Speaking of films i went to see "The Village" last week and was really disappointed, anyone conisdering seeing it personally don't bother if you don't you mind screwed with. The film was set in victorian times (or so i thought) and a blind woman ventured into the woods to get medicine for her boyfriend who had been stabbed. She killed a "monster" by jumping away at just the right moment so it fell down a hole then she went over a wall and the timeline of the whole film jumped a "few" years and she was in present day time. A park ranger in a Land Rover kindly got her medicine and she went back into the woods. Seems they'd been living isolated in a nature reserver a few hundred years behind our time. I wouldn't call it confusing, just plain wierd.
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It was a very good film. it was not a horror film, it was more towards the romantic genre type.
Basically, a man who had lost somebody precious to him through crime (stabbing and the like) and was a proffessor, and called around a bunch of other people in the same position. This is in 1980's, most probably. Possibly aerlier, into the 50's-70's. Anyway, all these people come up with a plan. That is, they go create a utopian village in the middle of an isolated wooded area where no such grief could ever strike them again.
The main guy creates the notion of monsters in order to both sccare people out of the ilsolated area, and to scare the villagers into staying within the confines of the village.
To make it more real, they proclaim that the colour red attracts the creatures (and so they must hide it) and they throw raw animal meat into the forest to them. The place for their village is in the middle of a park reserve where nobody is allowed to go, and it surrounded on all sides by a wall. Rangers patrol around the wall with siren cars (the monster howls, making them more real). Within the village, the 'elders' create a late 19th Century lifestyle, using only 19th century things. They even pay the US government to make flying planes and choppers over their village illegal, to increase the 19th C feeling.
Utopia is nice.
They have children and the like, and the main elder has a daughter who is blind, whilst another has a child with 'problems'. We're not sure exactly what they are, but its probably autism or something of that nature.
Anyway, the generation of children grow up in their victorian lifestyle, until an illness strikes and one of the new generation wants to go outside of the village and forest, claiming the monsters won't touch him, to get medicines for the ill person. The elders refuse; they don't want their cover and utopia blown.
This guy then falls in love with the blind person, and there is much courting and jealousy from the autistic (who loves her as well, but she cannot love him).
While working one day, the autistic comes to the guy who is in love and stabs him in the stomach. He runs away with the knife and is locked up in his house. While the guy is dying on some bed from the stab wound, the blind lover trieds to persuade her father to let her go get some medicines for him. He ends up revealling to her that the monsters are fake, and that they needed to be invented for their protection, but does not mention the jolted timeframe or irregularties in their utopia.
He ends up letting her go (for love and stuff), and she goes into the forest. However, the autstic has found one of the monster suits and broken out of the house and is chasing her in the forest. He ends up inpaling himself while trying to attack her on some sharp things, and the blind lass finds the road which leds out of the reserve.
She asks a guy in a siren van to take her to medicine point, and he does so. he gets medicine (this is Shyamalan's cameo), and takes her back. She doesn't know about the car, cus she's blind 'n' all.
She comes back through the forest and gives them the medicine. He ends up recovering, and the elders have a conference where they say that they'll say the monsters killed the autistic, making the monsters even more real.
Nobody is any the wiser of their dreams for utopia.
Clues that they're only pretending to be 19th century:
The alluminium fencing right right right at the beginning in the opening scene of the funeral.
Because everyone is obssessed with Shyamalands twist, here they are:
#1: The monsters aren't real, the elders dress up
#2: It's actually in modern times, as shown by the nature reserve walls, the modern truck, the newspapers, radios etc etc etc near the end.
People go into his movies looking for the twists. That ruins it. Go into the his movies wanting to watch a good movie. The twists are natural and nice (which people didn't like). Don't expect a Sixth Sense film here.
