Andy Chase

As with Amazon customer reviews, I am generally perplexed by the reviews people give to films on Imdb. When I say perplexed, I usually mean annoyed by the two types of reviewers there seem to be. First there are those who write as though they're getting paid by the word, and conclude with phrases like, "For this reason, I give this film 8 out of 10 stars," as though anyone is reading this but other would-be critics (or chumps like me). Then there are the types of people whose gripes with a film make you wonder whether they are able to remember more than 5 minutes of a film at a time, or whether they have ever actually seen a film that they liked.

I saw "The Village" on Friday, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. While looking up some of the cast on IMDB later that night, I started browsing user reviews, and I have to wonder why these people keep spending their money on movies when they clearly go into the theater expecting, hoping to be disappointed.

It seems to be fashionable with each successive M. Night Shyamalan release to compare it to the last, and say in your world-weariest voice, "Oh the big twist at the end was ssooooo predictable. I saw it coming an hour before the ending. It might as well have been a twiglight zone episode. This film wasn't as good as his last."

At risk of behaving like one of the legions of self-styled critics that I'm complaining about, I will offer the following as my impression of the film, and of Shyamalan as a filmmaker:

Shyamalan's films are exercises in storytelling. It sounds obvious and not particularly special, but it's a point that people seem to overlook. People are so fixated on whether or not each plot element is 100% different than every other film made in the last 100 years, or if something is "believable" (whatever that means when you're watching a story you know to be fiction) that they can't just watch the damn movie, enjoy the cinematography, and notice the things that he clearly wants us to see.

The thing that has struck me about each of M. Night Shyamalan's films is the care that has clearly gone into the dialog, framing, and direction of every shot; it's very deliberate film-making, and it's engaging... but I guess that doesn't count for a lot these days.