Trees Lunge

OUT OF THE WOODS: Bryce Dallas Howard reaches out.

Evil walks the woods — or does it? — in The Village.

by Sam Adams

A community bands together, united by tragedy and the fear of an unseen enemy. They fortify their borders and keep to themselves, their behavior constrained by rules whose value may have less to do with protection than peace of mind. The setting for M. Night Shyamalan's The Village is a tiny hamlet surrounded by menacing woods, sometime in what looks like the 18th century, but you'd be forgiven for thinking it sounds a lot like the here and now.

The villagers, led by elder Edward Walker (William Hurt), seem to have come here by choice, but they stay out of necessity. The woods, by the sound of it, are full of the creatures referred to only as "those we don't speak of" — though, strictly speaking, they're spoken of quite a lot — which is reason enough for the villagers to stay clear of the trees and forget any notion of seeking out the towns beyond.

Though the villagers live in a state of precarious stasis, something is stirring, in the woods and out. As Walker wistfully admits, "You may run from sorrow, but sorrow will find you." Shy but enterprising Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix) has the idea of braving the woods to seek help; the creatures, he reasons, can sense fear, and since he is not afraid, they will not harm him. Impatient for approval, he ventures into the woods on his own, and touches off a rash of creaturely visitations. (When eventually revealed, those-we-don't-speak-of look unfortunately like the stilt-legged things from The Dark Crystal.) That in turn piques the curiosity of Walker's blind daughter, Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard), whose sightlessness makes her the perfect match for the fumble-tongued Lucius.

Though The Village yields its share of Shyamalan-style twists, the emphasis is more on mood than plot; characters who ought to confront each other never do, and the transitions between scenes are as hazy as the perpetually overcast sky. It's emotion, not logic, that rules here, accentuated by Roger Deakins' subtly unnerving hand-held camera.

Since The Village announces itself as 9/11 allegory right off the bat, the interest is in seeing how the story plays out: If the creatures are as bad as the villagers think they are, is their cloistered protectionism justified? (For all the dread engendered by James Newton Howard's bombastic score, the worst they seem to do is skin a handful of livestock.) Is the external threat real or imagined, imminent or overstated? In real life, of course, the answer is a little of both, but such subtleties are usually outside the reach of Hollywood movies. Not so The Village, which finds a conceptually ingenious way of flipping the script. To say more would, as they say, be telling.