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metromix.chicagotribune.com - : Chicago Tribune - M. Night Shyamalan's ''The Village,'' a romantic horror film set in a painstakingly reconstructed 1897 Pennsylvania forest village, is a big, creepy dollhouse of a movie--a sometimes engrossing shocker with a surprise ending that isn't especially shocking or surprising. more...
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B -
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www.suntimes.com - : Chicago Sun-Times - ''The Village'' is a colossal miscalculation, 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. It's a flimsy excuse for a plot, with characters who move below the one-dimensional and enter Flatland. M. Night Shyamalan, the writer-director, has been successful in evoking horror from minimalist stories, as in ''Signs,'' which if you think about it rationally is absurd -- but you get too involved to think rationally. He is a director of considerable skill who evokes stories out of moods, but this time, alas, he took the day off. more...
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C -
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www.boston.com - : Boston Globe - ''The Village'' has a lot of wondrous spectacle -- cinematographer Roger Deakins has outdone himself here, giving the film's ''Twilight Zone'' scenarios the oil-painted light and heat of Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent. And while some of the acting is odd, it's all terrific. Phoenix is that rare actor who can turn chronic speechlessness into a form of comic piety, and Howard, daughter of Ron, is astonishing. Shyamalan clearly sees her as another of his holy-symbolic savants, but Howard, who seems pure without coming off virginal, complies only in the grueling latter going. more...
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B
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Critic Reviews
