Some historical context on the reception of The Village?
September 20, 2024 10:24 PM Subscribe
I recently watched Shyamalan's Trap and had some big thoughts about how weird it was, and the interesting way it was garbage and showcased his worst traits as a creator.
To make sure I wasn't crazy, I re-watched The Village, which had a mixed critical reception but in my mind was a well crafted and very interesting, engaging story told well.
The rewatch did not change my mind.
Can you provide any context for its reception at the time, in particular links to serious, thoughtful reviews that found it middling or panned it?
I find The Village to be an interesting story told in an interesting manner, super engaging, with just a few moments that hint the director might go on to make a movie like Trap. And yet both have a fairly similar critical reception, with Trap actually scoring higher in various aggregators, like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes.
This feels like a wild state of affairs to me. I'd really like to understand exactly why The Village, which I consider something clearly good and interesting, was treated so badly and has wound up with a consensus take that is on-par with something like Trap.
Can you provide any context for its reception at the time, in particular links to serious, thoughtful reviews that found it middling or panned it?
I find The Village to be an interesting story told in an interesting manner, super engaging, with just a few moments that hint the director might go on to make a movie like Trap. And yet both have a fairly similar critical reception, with Trap actually scoring higher in various aggregators, like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes.
This feels like a wild state of affairs to me. I'd really like to understand exactly why The Village, which I consider something clearly good and interesting, was treated so badly and has wound up with a consensus take that is on-par with something like Trap.
Historical: You can go to Rotten Tomatoes, click the reviews, select for "Top Critics," then scroll down too see pull quotes from contemporaneous reviews with many links to the full reviews. I'd say mixed to bad.
Anecdotal: My mother got so angry at how bad she thought this movie was that she has not returned to a movie theater since. Her sense of feeling trapped by being there with two other people (me and my dad) led to a 20 year boycott of the cinematic experience.
posted by MagnificentVacuum at 2:05 AM on September 21 [8 favorites]
Anecdotal: My mother got so angry at how bad she thought this movie was that she has not returned to a movie theater since. Her sense of feeling trapped by being there with two other people (me and my dad) led to a 20 year boycott of the cinematic experience.
posted by MagnificentVacuum at 2:05 AM on September 21 [8 favorites]
Some people were angry that he definitely stole the concept from this book.
posted by tangosnail at 7:25 AM on September 21 [2 favorites]
posted by tangosnail at 7:25 AM on September 21 [2 favorites]
I feel like M. Night Shyamalan had a brief run of movies starting with The Sixth Sense where he really could do no wrong and you heard his name attached to dozens of projects, and Hollywood turned on him HARD when The Village came out. It feels like a thing that happens sort of often with minority creators in the movie industry, that they get dubbed "the next genius, everything they touch turns to gold" and get a COLOSSAL amount of opportunity and work and attention in a very short period, and then eventually they make something that isn't incredible and the discourse about them reverses course overnight and everyone is suddenly sick of hearing about them.
Like if you remember how Thor Love and Thunder was received by fans, like somehow Taika Waititi went from "second coming of Christ" to "worst guy in the world" overnight? It was basically that. Folks were tired of hearing his name and used an imperfect film as an excuse to put him in his place.
I don't usually play a racism card on questions like this but it just feels like I don't see this sort of overnight "what do you MEAN it isn't his biggest hit yet?? Call security if you see him on the lot" reversal on white male directors happen so predictably.
posted by potrzebie at 7:26 AM on September 21 [6 favorites]
Like if you remember how Thor Love and Thunder was received by fans, like somehow Taika Waititi went from "second coming of Christ" to "worst guy in the world" overnight? It was basically that. Folks were tired of hearing his name and used an imperfect film as an excuse to put him in his place.
I don't usually play a racism card on questions like this but it just feels like I don't see this sort of overnight "what do you MEAN it isn't his biggest hit yet?? Call security if you see him on the lot" reversal on white male directors happen so predictably.
posted by potrzebie at 7:26 AM on September 21 [6 favorites]
Response by poster: Perhaps a handful of retrospectives would be better than contemporary reviews. One of the first things I did was go to meta critic and read a fair number.
MagnificentVacuum, did your mom enjoy it until the first monster showed up? Did she feel betrayed that what she thought was a period piece wasn’t? Did she dislike the strange way dialog was delivered, or the atypical shots? Or did the advertising at the time mislead the audience as to what to expect?
Was it as simple as a world that needed every Shyamalan movie to have a reveal in the end that changed everything, and this movie had a mediocre reveal in the middle instead? Or an inability to suspend disbelief for the premise of the community?
posted by Number Used Once at 7:54 AM on September 21
MagnificentVacuum, did your mom enjoy it until the first monster showed up? Did she feel betrayed that what she thought was a period piece wasn’t? Did she dislike the strange way dialog was delivered, or the atypical shots? Or did the advertising at the time mislead the audience as to what to expect?
Was it as simple as a world that needed every Shyamalan movie to have a reveal in the end that changed everything, and this movie had a mediocre reveal in the middle instead? Or an inability to suspend disbelief for the premise of the community?
posted by Number Used Once at 7:54 AM on September 21
This is just from memory and from peers, not critics: the thing you looked forward to and bought tickets for with his movies was ~~da twist~~ and people didn’t like this one (I did and I thought the movie had enough going for it otherwise.)
posted by kapers at 8:48 AM on September 21 [1 favorite]
posted by kapers at 8:48 AM on September 21 [1 favorite]
My mother is not much of a movie buff and has never been a particular fan of a director or a screenwriter, so it's highly unlikely she even knew that this movie was made by the same guy who made The Sixth Sense, which she did enjoy. I wanted to see it because I liked Signs, Unbreakable, and The Sixth Sense and invited my parents along for something to do.
She hated the dialogue, the acting, the writing choices for Brody's character, and the "stupid pig stick people," which is what she calls the "monsters" of that movie to this day. I'm not sure, but I think the pig part refers to the "bristly" part of the monster costume that emanated from the cloak. She, like my dad and me, instantly suspected that the people in this movie were not "historical" because their dialect seemed unrelated to any other historical dialect she had seen in a film, so she found the reveal schlocky. I don't remember which details she picked up on anymore, but I definitely remember her saying that the movie seemed like a bad puzzle for the audience to solve and not a realistic depiction of a plausible scenario, so suspension of disbelief was definitely an issue for her. She was stunned that such high quality actors would agree to be in the movie after reading such a script. To this day, she uses The Village as her low bar when making movie comparisons.
My father and I were so delighted by her vehement hatred that we spent the 15 minutes driving home in the car trying to convince her that we thought it was an Oscar-worthy triumph of film making. She threatened to have us hospitalized until we couldn't take it anymore and revealed that we agreed with her. I apologized for picking a bad movie.
(This experience was so memorable we actually reminisce about it fairly often, which is why I can recall some of these details. She will sometimes bring it up if I tell her I am interested in a new movie coming out, reminding me that my record for movie interest is eternally marred by my decision to see The Village in a movie theater.)
posted by MagnificentVacuum at 8:51 AM on September 21 [9 favorites]
She hated the dialogue, the acting, the writing choices for Brody's character, and the "stupid pig stick people," which is what she calls the "monsters" of that movie to this day. I'm not sure, but I think the pig part refers to the "bristly" part of the monster costume that emanated from the cloak. She, like my dad and me, instantly suspected that the people in this movie were not "historical" because their dialect seemed unrelated to any other historical dialect she had seen in a film, so she found the reveal schlocky. I don't remember which details she picked up on anymore, but I definitely remember her saying that the movie seemed like a bad puzzle for the audience to solve and not a realistic depiction of a plausible scenario, so suspension of disbelief was definitely an issue for her. She was stunned that such high quality actors would agree to be in the movie after reading such a script. To this day, she uses The Village as her low bar when making movie comparisons.
My father and I were so delighted by her vehement hatred that we spent the 15 minutes driving home in the car trying to convince her that we thought it was an Oscar-worthy triumph of film making. She threatened to have us hospitalized until we couldn't take it anymore and revealed that we agreed with her. I apologized for picking a bad movie.
(This experience was so memorable we actually reminisce about it fairly often, which is why I can recall some of these details. She will sometimes bring it up if I tell her I am interested in a new movie coming out, reminding me that my record for movie interest is eternally marred by my decision to see The Village in a movie theater.)
posted by MagnificentVacuum at 8:51 AM on September 21 [9 favorites]
The thing I loved about The Village was that it didn't follow the premise of other movies of his.
Sixth Sense: Conventional wisdom says SPOILERS aren't real, but the movie shows they are.
Signs: Conventional wisdom says SPOILERS aren't real, but the movie shows they are.
Unbreakable: Conventional wisdom says SPOILERS aren't real, but the movie shows they are.
Lady in the Water: Conventional wisdom says SPOILERS aren't real, but the movie shows they are.
But the setup for The Village is that SPOILERS are real, and the movie shows they're not.
posted by emelenjr at 2:25 PM on September 21 [2 favorites]
Sixth Sense: Conventional wisdom says SPOILERS aren't real, but the movie shows they are.
Signs: Conventional wisdom says SPOILERS aren't real, but the movie shows they are.
Unbreakable: Conventional wisdom says SPOILERS aren't real, but the movie shows they are.
Lady in the Water: Conventional wisdom says SPOILERS aren't real, but the movie shows they are.
But the setup for The Village is that SPOILERS are real, and the movie shows they're not.
posted by emelenjr at 2:25 PM on September 21 [2 favorites]
I remember thinking it was okay, better than the reception at the time.
But there was one particular thing that I remember (even though it has been a while): the language not being fully period would be revealed by the twist, but until it did, I started to just think they were bad actors of dialect, and it took me out of the movie.
posted by umbú at 7:53 AM on September 22
But there was one particular thing that I remember (even though it has been a while): the language not being fully period would be revealed by the twist, but until it did, I started to just think they were bad actors of dialect, and it took me out of the movie.
posted by umbú at 7:53 AM on September 22
This is a fun question for me, because I worked in a movie theater that showed it. I remember the first week's audiences coming in with an "oooooh prestige movie" attitude and mostly coming out disappointed, whereas by the third week people more wanted to see if it was as bad as everyone said. Which, like, it's not (look how hilariously mean this Roger Ebert review is) but it's a weird movie. I personally rather enjoyed it, especially the costuming and camerawork, but I did not find the twist difficult to guess, let's just say.
I actually have a theory! The awkward, slow-burn, quasi-historical vibes of The Village are a precursor to A24-style elevated horror, and if you're a nowadays person who dug The VVitch or Midsommar or the like, you're probably a lot more likely to get on its wavelength. But it was an era of movies with much more conventional editing (including The Sixth Sense) and people were expecting a Scary! Time! At! The Movies! It also had a pretty compelling trailer that made it look like a straight up horror movie. There was a lot of hype!
I think there's also something to what potrzebie said, where minority directors get way less chances to screw up and if they make a movie that's not great, it's culturally perceived as a bigger deal. That same summer, the Coen Brothers made The Ladykillers, which got terrible reviews, and that's like a blip in their careers.
posted by Nibbly Fang at 6:30 PM on September 22
I actually have a theory! The awkward, slow-burn, quasi-historical vibes of The Village are a precursor to A24-style elevated horror, and if you're a nowadays person who dug The VVitch or Midsommar or the like, you're probably a lot more likely to get on its wavelength. But it was an era of movies with much more conventional editing (including The Sixth Sense) and people were expecting a Scary! Time! At! The Movies! It also had a pretty compelling trailer that made it look like a straight up horror movie. There was a lot of hype!
I think there's also something to what potrzebie said, where minority directors get way less chances to screw up and if they make a movie that's not great, it's culturally perceived as a bigger deal. That same summer, the Coen Brothers made The Ladykillers, which got terrible reviews, and that's like a blip in their careers.
posted by Nibbly Fang at 6:30 PM on September 22
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“a movie based on a premise that cannot support it, a premise so transparent it would be laughable were the movie not so deadly solemn. ... Eventually the secret of [the film] is revealed. To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes” ~ Roger Ebert, via syfy
posted by HearHere at 10:58 PM on September 20 [2 favorites]