Review of The Village

Following the success of "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable", both of which I liked a lot, M. Night Shyamalan had a bit of a clunker with "The Village". The trailers for the film had you hungering for a supernatural movie excursion, but the resolution of the story blew the whole thing right out of the water. Given that the Amish people live in the same state as the location for 'The Village', it's impossible to my mind for some community to live as if they're the only one on the planet. Even the Amish have contact with the outside world, while maintaining their own beliefs and traditions. The idea that the community elders would willfully keep their members from learning or even knowing anything of the outside world seemed absolutely perverse to me. So all that talk of 'those we do not speak of', the 'bad' color and magic rocks, which might have been intriguing in another venue, were simply wasted here once the truth of The Village was revealed with the death of Noah (Adrien Brody) and Ivy's (Bryce Dallas Howard) contact with the modern world. There may have been secrets in every corner of this village, but a little intellectual curiosity by any one of it's residents would have made the story unnecessary.