Spoiler Filled Review of M. Night Shymalan's The Village

Seriously now, lots and lots of spoilers ahead. I ruin the surprises (and M. Night Shymalan is known for his surprises.. Really. Unless you have already seen this movie or are sure you won't see it, do not read this entry.

Now, I didn't enjoy this movie as much as I normally would have: there were two groups of people (one in the front row, one a few rows behind me) in the theater with me that were drunk, high or extremely immature: they laughed at serious moments and at people's pain. I would have been seriously annoyed except I was so into the movie.

This movie has a facinating take on fear, it makes me think of "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."


An isolated village in 1897 (with a few disturbingly out-of-place elements--look at the the first scene closely) lives in fear of the monsters outside. The monsters threaten the villagers, to the point that they have someone stand guard each night. They have many rituals to attempt to placate the monsters, to discourage them from entering the village, among these, the obsessive hiding of the 'bad color', the painting of the 'safe color' on all of the posts that mark the borders of the village and the absolute prohibition of leaving the village.

Permission to leave is even denied to Lucius Hunt, who wishes to leave the village to get medicine from 'the towns' since a boy has recently died, in part due to the village's lack. Lucius is recognized by the village elders, and others, as having a fearlessness about him. Boys play a game, turning their backs to the woods, towards the mysterious creatures who live there, and see how long they can wait until they get scared: Lucius broke the record a long time ago and no one else has come close to beating him.

He believes that he would be able to make it past the monsters, since they can sense emotions and he is not afraid. He is further convinced of this when he discovers that Noah Percy, a mentally challenged man about his age, has gone into the forest on numerous occasions without being bothered by the beasts: Noah has even been carrying around berries of the bad color (gotten, no doubt, from the woods beyond the village) and he still has not been bothered. But, even after he reveals this to the elders (including his own mother), the elders continue to refuse permission. However, we begin to get hints that the elders have their own secrets...Lucius points out that there is a mysterious locked box in a corner of each elder's house and each elder seems to have a horrific story of losing someone close to them.

Simultaneously, another story is going on: a love story.

A young woman, Ivy Walker, is blind; yet she, in some ways, she sees more than most. She knows every step of the village such that she never needs help finding her way, she has a special relationship with Noah (he obeys and worships her) and she can see the auras of two people so that she knows when they are near by sight, not by voice: her father and Lucius.

One day, shortly after Ivy's sister Kitty proposed marriage to and was turned down by Lucius, Ivy tells him that she knows the reason: Lucius is in love with Ivy, not Kitty. Lucius is completely silent at this statement, which Ivy takes as a question (as she frequently does). She answers the unspoken question like this, "Sometimes we don't do things that we want to do, so that others don't know we want to do them" and reminds him that he stopped touching her, even to hold her arm to help guide her, a long time ago.

One evening, shortly after this revelation, the creatures come. Ivy, rather than immediately hiding with her sister and others under the floorboards, waits for Lucius, sure that he will come to her. She waits, quaking in fear, dangerously close to the creatures, until the faith she had in Lucius is born out: he grabs her, pulls her safely inside the house and into the hiding space with the others.

The next day Lucius apolgizes to the town. He had ventured a few feet beyond the border; the creatures had retaliated. The viewer is left with the knowledge that he will never attempt to convince the elders to let him leave again...

The full reason for this change comes from more than just endangering the village, as he tells Ivy: "[T]he only time I feel fear as others do is when I think of you in harm? That is why I am on this porch, Ivy Walker. I fear for your safety before all others." For all his bravery, Lucius learns fear and learns what lines he will never attempt to cross again.

In any case, that night, the two of them become engaged. The following day, Noah goes to see Lucius; Lucius tries to reassure the mentally challenged Noah that there are many types of love and that Ivy has enough room in her heart...he looks down and sees that Noah has stabbed him. When Ivy finds her fiancee, she is frightened: for the first time, she cannot see his color, his aura.

Understanding that his only chance at survival is medicine from the towns, she begs permission to leave the village. Remember, she has never been the brave one with regards to this, it is only that her love for Lucius that she overcomes her fear, she says, "If he dies, all that is life to me will die with him."

The elders confer and agree and Ivy learns the astonishing truth...

Her father, Edward Walker, takes her to a forbidden shed and shows her a costume: it is one of the creatures. There are no creatures; the elders were inspired by old stories to invent a reason to keep their children close to the village. Seeming to understand, or at least, accept for the time being, their overarching goal, she only asks her father to explain one thing: why the elders would kill livestock. The 'creatures' had been blamed, but if no creatures exist...her father calms her, claiming it was a misguided elder and no more attacks will happen.

Knowing the truth, Ivy leaves the village with two escorts. But her escorts have not been told the truth and so are frightened to enter the forest they have been warned about for all of their lives. Eventually, they both leave her alone to face the forest, which, for her, is shrouded in darkness.

She continues on her journey and then hears breathing. Someone, one of the creatures, is following her...

She knows it is not one of the elders; they would not try to frighten her now. But she remembers that they based the creatures on legends...perhaps the legends were true.

Frightened beyond belief, she still somehow manages to trick the creature into a large pit, one she herself almost died in earlier. After the creature hits bottom, the audience can see his identity: Noah Percy. In that instant, many small discrepencies become clear, but Ivy merely continues her way. Suffice to say, she gets the medicine from an unusual, but clearly hinted at source.

We cut back to the village where the elders are each looking at the items in the mysterious box: photographs and newspaper clippings that belie the time period that they had claimed to be in. It is not 1897, but the late 1990's or after. But the clippings have horrible stories of death, the deaths of the family members of the elders.

And then a photograph. It is of all of the elders, much younger, of course, standing in front of a counseling center. The voice-over has each elder talking about how the person that he or she loved, died. Then Edward Walker's voice: "I am a professor of 19th century history and I have an idea.."

The mystery of the village is solved. These elders, a long time ago, found each other in a counseling center after the violent deaths of people they knew. They decided, in their fear, to retreat from the world and create a simpler, more peaceful, time for themselves and their children.

But to keep their children in the village, they needed to create a reason, a necessity not to go beyond the borders. And so, they created the story of the creatures, but no creature existed as heinous as their own imaginings. They were safe.

Except...

Except that violence entered their village, in the guise of Noah.

Except that they imprisoned their children with a fear as strong as any of the elders had ever felt.

Except that living in this simple, quiet village did not erase their heartache, as one of the elders said, "I lost my sister before I came to the village, I lost the rest of my family after. The heartache is the same. We cannot run from heartache... Heartache is a part of life."

Except that their fear of the outside world was so great, they did not geat life-saving medicines that they knew existed for their children.

Except that they knew something was wrong in the village, that someone was killing the livestock, and since they knew the creatures were a myth, they had no idea what caused it.

The only thing imprisioning them and their children, the only thing that ever imprisoned them, was fear. This is true even for the brave Lucius; his fear for Ivy's safety eventually imprisoned him along with the others.

The elders wanted a place to feel safe. But the way they managed to accomplish this was to cause fear in others.

And they were never truly safe...they just thought they were.