The Village

What is director-writer-producer M. Night Shyamalan associated with? The twist ending. The BIG twist ending. From The Sixth Sense to Signs, Unbreakable to The Happening, Shyamalan has made a career out of that pull the rug out from under you feeling. I've seen most of them, and now I can check off 2004's The Village, another Shyamalan vehicle with a twist in the end.

In a small, isolated village in the Pennsylvania countryside in the late 1890s, life goes on pretty much as normal on a day-to-day basis. Well....pretty much. The close-knit community is isolated from the rest of the world, all the townspeople unable to leave a perimeter surrounding the village. Why? The town has a delicate truce with something living in the woods, creatures dubbed "Those We Don't Speak Of." One of the townspeople, Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix), a young man, is sure the creatures will let them pass if approached in non-aggressive fashion. He is close to Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard), a young woman who lost her vision as a child, who also believes Lucius' plan. It is a pleasant if limited life, but Lucius wants to explore, to question. Can he convince the village elders to give him the chance? Will Those We Don't Speak Of stop him before he can do anything?

Here we sit. Though his films have struggled some at the box office and especially critically, Shyamalan is a talented director. He is. He has few rivals when it comes to building tension, to setting the mood, creating that unbearable sense of doom looming just over the horizon. What's coming next? What's gonna happen?!? Sometimes though, it feels like the films get so wrapped up in building up to the twist that the movie suffers. The focus becomes all about that twist. 'Village' suffers from that issue to a point. At different points, there is A TON of potential that seems to be building to something really crazy, interesting and entertaining. The gloomy setting -- it's seemingly always cloudy -- sets the mood in ideal fashion, and composer James Newton Howard picked up an Oscar nomination for his haunting, eerily beautiful score. So where does it go....

Semi-SPOILERS for this paragraph. I won't give anything specific away, but I've got to at least address it. There's actually two different reveals, one revealed about the hour-mark of the 109-minute movie, the other popping up about the 90-minute checkpoint. They're not bad. The big twist doesn't feel so forced, so out of left field that you question why the script (Shyamalan doing the honors) even went there. It's original. It's unique. It's just not necessarily....well, good. There are some hints dropped along the way, but it did catch me by surprise. If there is a goof, it's in the reveal of the first twist. It comes along too early, taking away from a later scene that would have been dripping with tension and terror if we didn't know what we do (if that makes sense). The biggest issue is that the ending feels rushed without letting things breathe a little bit. Too bad because as far as twists go, this one could have been a doozy of a gem.

Now with the mood, the tension, the mystery, the cast and characters do a good job with a story/script where the focus isn't specifically on them. They're a means to an end. Phoenix does a good job as the moody, questioning Lucius (quite a stretch, huh?) while Howard especially shines as Ivy, the blind young woman who is a favorite in the village because of her generally pleasant outlook on everything. As for the town elders, look for William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson and Cherry Jones.  For some of the other townspeople, keep an eye out for Judy Greer, Michael Pitt, Jesse Eisenberg, and Adrien Brody as Noah, the mentally challenged adult who never grew up. Some very good actors committing to generally unwritten parts and doing their best to bring it to life.

There's something missing in general here. The build-up is there, that tension and fear of the unknown palpable through much of the first hour. From there on in though, the story loses momentum with a focus on the village and the people. I wanted to like it more. I wish I had liked it more, but it's not bad, just not as good as it could have been unfortunately. A disappointing semi-misfire.

The Village (2004): ** 1/2 /****

After Earth

What exactly happened to M. Night Shyamalan somewhere around 2003? The director had just made Signs, an oddly good sci-fi flick, but followed it up with The Village, Lady in the Water, The Happening and The Last Airbender. One bad movie on top of each other. Well, it's gotta turn around at some point, right? How about 2013's After Earth?!? Is this the one?!? Nope.

Sometime in the future, Earth has been destroyed, making the planet virtually inhabitable and forcing its human survivors to leave it behind, settling on a new planet, Nova Prime. The planet has come under attack, forcing the United Ranger Corps, headed by General Cypher Raige (Will Smith), to defend Nova Prime against the aliens' main weapon, the Ursas, immense, blind creatures that literally smell "fear." His son, Kitai (Jaden Smith), wants nothing more than to follow in his legendary father's footsteps, trying to become a Ranger himself as a cadet at Ranger School. His relationship with his father is far from close though, Kitai's mother convincing Cypher to take his son along on his last mission. They're in for a ride though, the ship flying into an asteroid shower and crashing on a remote planet. There are no survivors other than Cypher and Kitai (of course, who would have figured?!?), leaving the father-son duo to work together to survive. The catch? They're on a horrifically transformed planet Earth that has evolved in the thousand years since humans left.

In spite of getting almost universally panned by critics, 'Earth' still managed to make almost $60 million in the U.S., doing pretty well internationally too. Not a bad total until you consider it cost $130 million to make. Just because critics and reviewers don't like a movie doesn't automatically make a movie bad....but in this case, they were right. This movie is really, truly bad, one of the worst movies I've seen this year. Originally an idea from Will Smith, 'Earth' struggles to find any footing and never manages to find any. The script is bad, the acting worse, and the developing story turns into a 1970s after school special. With a premise somewhat similar to this year's Oblivion (scorched Earth, what's left?), I thought it could be mildly entertaining, but it wasn't. It was bad, right from the start too.

I feel bad criticizing a young actor, but here we sit just the same. This is my first introduction to Jaden Smith, and it isn't a particularly good one. Some of my issues can obviously be chalked up to the script that does no one any favors, but it's more than that. This is one whiny teenager who's dripping with teen angst. He wants to be like his father, to show him he belongs, but he's also tortured by guilt having seen his sister (Zoe Kravitz) die in an Ursas attack. Good Lord, just pick one cliched stereotype and stick with it. You don't have to throw everything against the wall and see what sticks. I couldn't shake the feeling that this movie was an excuse by Will Smith to get his son a starring role, and that's never a good thing. The gimmick of the real-life father son working together is quickly washed away thanks to the script.

So how about Will Smith? This has to be one of his worst performances. Playing Cypher, he's supposed to be this ultra-cool, no-nonsense, all business legend who discovered how to beat the Ursas. The plan? Literally show no fear and the creatures can't sense you. Translated....that means show no real emotion. Smith took that message to heart, not showing anything other than a comatose face that looks like he may or may not be sleepwalking. It's unreal how wooden this performance is. We're talking one step below a cardboard box. The kinda cool feature that Cypher can see everything Kitai sees through some advanced technology is wasted because Will Smith literally shows no emotion the entire movie. There are moments he seems concerned whether his son makes it or not (I suppose, it's hard to read), but even a legendary hero who has NO FEAR would seemingly be slightly, remotely concerned.

The script in general is bad, from a rushed, wasted introduction that lays everything out to the familiar plot holes late. With such a cool background to tap for potential, the prologue doesn't specify enough, throwing a whole lot of tidbits out there and hoping some of them stick. Once Cypher and Kitai's ship goes down on Earth, I figured things might pick up, but it doesn't. Kitai battles baboons, immense birds, tiger-lions, just one calamity on top of another. At one point, his lifesuit turns colors -- adjusting to the situation and its needs -- and Kitai communicates with Cypher "My suit is changing colors....I think I like it!" while....being....pursued...by....baboons. If I'm sprinting from baboons in a forest, that's the least of my concerns. Mostly, it came across as painful to watch as Kitai finally voices all his problems he has with his father.

I've wasted too much time and written too many words on this one. It ain't good, and there's little to nothing to recommend here. Pass in a big way.

After Earth (2013): */****

Signs

Bursting onto the movie scene like few other directors have, M. Night Shyamalan had a huge, surprise hit with his first movie, 1999's The Sixth Sense.  It was a movie that caught people off guard with its quality and especially the huge, twist ending that on repeated viewings seems painfully obvious, but that first viewing? About as complete a shock as a movie can produce.  But since Sixth Sense, Shyamalan's movies have gone progressively downhill for the most part.  The one exception seems to be 2002's Signs.

It's easier judging movies at the time they were made and not 8 years later because a lot can change in that time.  But with Signs, it's hard not to see how the mighty have fallen.  Shyamalan's four movies since have ranged from below average to panned and stars Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix have both hit some road blocks in their career, more on a personal level with personal choices than actual career choices. But at the time they were all near or at the top of their games in terms of fan following and a general popularity.  Since? Maybe not so much, but it's hard not to watch this movie and think about the departures from success this trio has gone through.

Living on his family farm some 45 miles outside Philadelphia, former reverend Graham Hess (Gibson) wakes up one morning to find huge crop circles in his cornfields.  What could they mean?  Are they elaborate pranks, hoaxes performed by teenagers, or just maybe, could they be something else, something other worldly?  With his brother Merrill (Phoenix) and his two kids, Morgan (Rory Culkin) and Bo (Abigail Breslin), Graham begins to question what's happening, and he's not the only one.  Similar crop circles start popping up in countries all over the world while strange, unexplained lights float over these cities. As the world questions what is going on, Graham remains focused on getting his family through whatever is about to happen.

From the moment the opening credits started and composer James Newton Howard's score kicked in, all I could think was how much the movie's style reminded me of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. Playing on some Hitchcockian tendencies, Shyamalan makes an often unsettling thriller that for the most part keeps you guessing. He creates a very thick tension, a sense of the coming doom that is about to hit this little farm.  The story is almost entirely contained at the Hess farm with a few quick detours and a character here and there making an appearance.  But above all else, this is a story about the Hess family and their struggles and solutions for this unexplained phenomena taking place all over the world.

Through his handful of movies, Shyamalan has become typecast as the "ending twist director."  You go into his movies now thinking 'I wonder how he's going to trick us here' thanks to the con job he pulled in Sixth Sense.  Well, here's the twist...sort of.  There isn't a major, shocking slap you in the face surprise.  If anything the ending is a little weak in its execution.  Like a lot of thrillers that start off so strongly, Signs struggles to maintain that pace throughout.  It's like Christmas Eve.  You see the presents and wonder what's in them.  The wait and wonder can be half the fun.  The revelation here -- while creepy and well-handled -- falls short in a lot of ways, especially in its resolution.  This isn't a movie-derailing flaw, just one that prevented it from being a near-classic.  The ending is good, but not great.

In the news more for his anti-Semitic rants lately, Gibson shows here that as always, he was a very capable actor capable of pulling off incredibly dramatic roles.  His Graham Hess is a tortured soul, one struggling with an incident from the past that claimed his wife's life.  He tries to trudge on, to start life over again in a sense, raising his kids as best he can.  Graham struggles with the faith that carried him through even the roughest patches in the past and doesn't quite know how to handle this dilemma.  Phoenix has said he's retiring from acting -- a shame because of his epic talent -- and this is another quirky role for him.  I can't put my finger on Merrill, a middle-aged man who never quite lived up to his potential and knows it but is nonetheless a good man who moves in with his brother to help raise the children.  A very solid supporting performance.  Culkin and Breslin also impress on the child actor scale, never grating or annoying, just good actors.

The movie has its fair share of creepy moments with the sense of the unknown hovering over the world.  Shyamalan's shooting style emphasizes all this with camera work that is never invasive or over the top.  His camera isn't moving all around.  Scenes are long, unedited takes that put you on edge because you keep waiting for something huge, something shocking to come flying at the camera.  The fact that the huge surprise never comes? A complaint, but not a major one.  The build-up and tension is strong enough to carry the movie past some of its struggles in the last third.

Signs <---trailer (2002): ***/****