The Village

Bryce Dallas Howard (Ron's daughter) is an incredible up-and-coming actress who turns in an amazing performance in M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village".

Unfortunately, that's the only good thing I can say about Mr. Shyamalan's fourth film. The people behind me in the theater expressed the sentiments of many when they exclaimed, "Thank God it's over!" as the credits rolled. While I am a big fan of "The Sixth Sense" and "Signs" I found myself more disappointed in "The Village" than I was with "Unbreakable". Don't worry, there are no spoilers in this review.

The movie opens with the burial of a child in a rural Pennsylvania community. While we don't know for certain, the kid probably died from boredom. The headstone sets the year in the late 1800s and the entire village, approximately 50 people, are in attendance. They have lived sheltered and protected lives, surrounded by a woods inhabited by creatures that don't bother the townsfolk as long as the humans don't enter the woods. A chain of events unfold that leads to the town leader (William Hurt) allowing his blind daughter Ivy (Howard) to leave the village in order to get medicine for Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix).

After a painfully long and dull first hour, some surprising events actually occur that woke me from my near-coma, suggesting something exciting may actually happen. Alas, no. Not only is the dialog weak, it's irritatingly paced and plodding. There are no contractions in the characters statements. Maybe Shyamalan was trying to remain true to the era, but it was like putting a golf cart in mud. What was already moving slow manages to get stuck.

The moral of the story for "The Village" seems to be that for all the evil that surrounds us, the demons that are our biggest enemy come from within. As for me, "The Village" is the most boring place I've been to all summer. Think of the grade of D as standing for Dull and Disappointing.

"The Village" is rated PG-13 with a running time of 109 minutes.