Gone to America

The film that kept coming into my head while I was watching M. Night Shyamalan’s latest was the 70s British horror movie The Wicker Man. I was thinking about the things that The Wicker Man got right and The Village didn’t. They both deal with isolated communities operating on strong, unconventional beliefs, and they both aim to chill, but the older movie strikes deeper by far.
The Village has it’s moments. Shyamalan is no one trick pony – he really knows what he’s doing as a director, and he can pull a very effective, creepy scene out of not many elements. He can build a shocking moment with the best of them, without relying on special effects or a bombastic score, and no one can accuse him of playing it safe in his coverage. It’s a much better directed film than The Wicker Man, on a pure one-shot-after-the-other basis.
But it’s not nearly as well written. It’s solid enough, and if the expected “Shyamalan Twist” at the end is a little predictable, he pulls off one hell of a surprise halfway through that makes up for it, but it’s lacking something large that the other film didn’t. Something that makes all the difference. Belief.
The Wicker Man is so disturbing because it confronts us with the ultimate irrationality – faith. (I’m not faith bashing – rationality isn’t everything). It’s terrifying. Christianity and Paganism confront each other, each playing out to their furthest extreme – sacrifice and martyrdom – and we shiver at the power of inexplicable belief to shape reality, including the reality of those who don’t share them.
The Village lacks anything like this kind of resonance. It skirts similar territory, but the beliefs of the inhabitants are so bizarre and outside any actual human experience that it becomes clear that they are really just a convenience. It’s a scare machine – a device for generating moments that chill, as opposed to finding the chill within the device itself.
The difference is in Shyamalan’s decision to show us the monsters, albeit fuzzily and quickly; we never saw the gods inThe Wicker Man. Shaymalan’s character’s beliefs have to be justified and explained in terms of observable reality and their actions motivated by plausible psychological reasoning. How dull! The inhabitants of Summerisle just believed, which was infinitely more interesting, and human.
It’s not a bad movie – it’s well put together, intelligently written, and with some cool bits and good performances. It just doesn’t really have any soul. Shyamalan is trying to be Hitchcock, and play his audience like an accordion. I have no problem with this, but it helps if you have some genuine insight into the human condition to build on. None is displayed here, and it all falls apart before you get very far.