Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

38 12 Rounds
48 17 Again
76 Adventureland
48 Angels & Demons
54 Battle for Terra
xx Bruno
80 Coraline
40 Dance Flick
83 Drag Me to Hell
72 Earth
45 Fast & Furious
61 Fighting
34 Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
72 Gran Torino
73 Hangover, The
47 Hannah Montana: The Movie
51 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
54 Imagine That
41 Knowing
32 Land of the Lost
56 Monsters vs. Aliens
34 My Life in Ruins
51 My Sister's Keeper
46 Next Day Air
42 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
54 Observe and Report
25 Obsessed
48 Proposal, The
70 Public Enemies
61 Soloist, The
83 Star Trek
64 State of Play
55 Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, The
52 Terminator Salvation
35 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
77 Under the Sea 3D
88 Up
43 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
34 Year One

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Village, The
Touchstone Pictures


5.6

based on 40 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 246 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for scenes of violence and frightening situations

Starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson, Cherry Jones, Judy Greer, and Celia Weston

The thrilling tale of an isolated village confronting the astonishing truth that lies just outside its borders. (Touchstone Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Horror \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	M. Night Shyamalan
DIRECTED BY:	M. Night Shyamalan
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: January 11, 2005 Video: January 11, 2005 Theatrical: July 30, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	115 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Empire Ian Nathan

Made with such elegance, atmosphere and wonderfully mannered performances it will nestle deep inside your head, refusing to budge. The more you ponder it, the better it becomes.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

A third-generation performer, this daughter of actor-director Ron Howard makes a stunning feature debut.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The Village, even when its step falters, is on to something more provocative than seeing dead people. Its power, unrelated to digital monsters, comes from the tension building inside the characters.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Spellbinding if ponderous.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

For those who like the director's body of work, appreciate "The Twilight Zone," and have a high suspension of disbelief threshold, The Village is likely to satisfy.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

The Village may have finally emptied his usual bag of tricks, but considered on its own merits, its skillful fusion of Grimm fairy-tale horror and pointed social parable find Shyamalan in peak form.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

The Village is a better movie (than Signs) --probably his best since "The Sixth Sense"--but it indulges Shyamalan's penchant for messianic uplift.

Entertainment Weekly Mark Harris

It gives nothing of the plot away to say that there's a fine line between an ''Aha!'' and an ''Oh, brother!'' Whether you feel The Village crosses that line may hinge on whether you think Shyamalan's screenwriting ability is beginning to lag behind his skill as a director.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A big, creepy dollhouse of a movie--a sometimes engrossing shocker with a surprise ending that isn't especially shocking or surprising.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The Village emerges as a victim of its own ambitions. At one point, Edward advises Ivy: "Do your very best not to scream." That doesn't require much restraint on our part.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

It doesn't take a genius IQ to figure out the movie's final twist far in advance, leaving the attentive viewer to wonder only about how Shyamalan will pull it off and to hope the movie doesn't turn silly.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Unlike "The Sixth Sense," the film's key revelation might be too mild to jolt audiences. Some may even feel cheated.

Time Richard Corliss

The film's payoff raises more questions than it answers, which may be Shyamalan's intent in this political parable of fear.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

The result is his (Shyamalan's) most meditative and lovingly rendered offering thus far, if also his least fun.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

The Village goes up in smoke (and mirrors). It wants to find a profoundness that hints at something deep and dimensional, but it hasn't the courage of conviction to stay on course as an unabashed ode to innocence.

Portland Oregonian Karen Karbo

Thriller is hardly the word for this tedious exercise in clue-hiding.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The Village yields a trick ending quite lame, quite tame and quite old; Rod Serling thought of it 40 years ago and he did it better.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Not only is The Village not credible, its shallowness makes it dislikable, a shopworn gothic plot focusing on stereotypical characters with disabilities, with no ambitions beyond playing a simple-minded audience head game.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Shyamalan remains a stilted screenwriter, but Roger Deakins's cinematography is spooky, creepy, eerie all the way.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Pours on creepy atmosphere, but this dud is too intent on delivering its liberal "message" to actually deliver the kinds of scares it promises in the terrific trailer.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The Village is Shyamalan's weakest story, and its ending - whether or not you're surprised by it - is a genuine clinker.

Variety Brian Lowry

A watchable film for awhile that unravels in a muddled last act likely to send many opening-weekend filmgoers home head-scratching and grumbling.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

I will tell you what The Village is not: It is not scary. It is not all that interesting. It isn't even much of a movie.

Premiere Aaron Hillis

When the secret is finally divulged, it’s such a letdown that it feels unfairly manipulative to have sat through such agonizing tedium.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Shyamalan remains as coolly unstirred by sex as he was in his previous movies--an astounding indifference, given the historical entwining of eros and fright. Even more bizarre is the gradual draining of humor from his work; the anatomy of horror demands a tongue in the cheek to go with the baring of teeth, but much of The Village is a proud and sullen affair.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

The film's ridiculousness would not be so irksome if Mr. Shyamalan did not take his sleight of hand so seriously, if he did not insist on dressing this scary, silly, moderately clever fairy tale in a somber cloak of allegory.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

This undeniably talented writer-director has been repeating himself with steadily decreasing potency ever since the wonderful "The Sixth Sense," and his latest excursion does nothing to buck the trend.

Film Threat Chad Bixby

Everyone here sounds trapped in a high school staging of “The Crucible,” and after about an hour, this high-toned creature feature wears out its welcome and starts to seem rather boring and pretentious, the two greatest sins any movie can commit.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The film's gotcha! payoff doesn't justify the gloomy journey.

Newsweek David Ansen

The entire solemn, portentous edifice that is The Village collapses of its own fake weight. Just about everything that makes Shyamalan special misfires here.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The real mystery at the heart of M. Night Shyamalan's latest: How does he persuade actors like Sigourney Weaver and Adrien Brody to act in his supremely lame movies?

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

The screwiest yarn yet from Shyamalan's metaphysical-Limburger career project, a non-horror horror film.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It's exasperating watching so much top-drawer talent wasted in a film that wraps itself up with one of the most preposterous (not to mention obvious) endings the genre has ever seen.

Slate David Edelstein

The photography is excellent! the music is striking! the movie is a stinker!

Chicago Reader Hank Sartin

Every eerily tranquil shot, weirdly elliptical scene, and peculiar line reading contributes to a mood of detachment rather than creeping dread.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

For the most part, the film's a bewildering disappointment.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

It's tedious instead of provocative and so unconvincing as to be preposterous.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The Village seems poised to become as cheesy in its effects as a low-budget horror film. Shyamalan's gracefulness keeps his movie just out of that abyss.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

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.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

It's bad enough to make parable a four-letter word.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.6 (out of 10) based on 246 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Paul F. gave it a9:
What can I say but I really liked this film. I actually do not like horror/suspense films but The Village transcended any such definition by being much more psychological oriented which begged the question of much larger sociological condition. For those who prefer their films coated with candy this is not the film for you. If however you enjoy a thought provoking film that is masterfully acted with a beautiful and believable setting then this films is one of the rare ones. Among other things this film actually made me long for an innocence that living in the modern fast paced world has robbed us of. I can definitely see the allure. But then again the pesky human condition of suffering, and often by our own hand, raises its ugly head. I however was soothed by the love story. What one is willing to go through for true love is a theme I never tire of. And considering Ivy's condition it made it all the more so powerful. It was as if I could feel what it was see was feeling, the fear, love, and sheer will to continue. And by the end I felt uplifted by the results of her trails as well as the difficult choice of the elders, even if it only supposedly occurs in one tiny portion of the world.

[Anonymous] gave it a9:
I can't believe the only reason people don't like this movie is because of the 'twist' at the end. That is not even close to the most important part of the movie! It's a great flick.

Louis's brother gave it a1:
For all you people who were dissmayed at the fact that it wasn't really a thriller, I know how you feel. When I first go the chance to see this movie, was expecting at-the-edge-of-your-seat thrilling events like monster killing or mass murder. But nooooooo, the only slightly exciting parts were in the previews, which in my opinon, was better than the actual movie. The rest of it is just everyday life for people in the 18th century. What I hated the most was the ending. What they say is an , "Astonishing" truth is, in actuallity a big dissapointment. The only money this movie made is a product of flavored false advertising. Don't see the movie and from now on don't entirely trust previews.

Andy gave it a1:
Just horrible. It thinks it's clever but it's just lazy in coming up with a tricky ending.

[Anonymous] gave it an8:
What's frightening about Shymalan's movies is not the monsters / aliens / ghosts. Shymalan turns his thrillers inward and scares us with the thought of what the human mind is capable of. Those who complained that the monsters weren't real have completely missed the point. In reality the monsters are real, they don't lurk in the woods and manifest themsleves by jumping out at us and saying boo. Instead they lurk in our minds and manifest themsleves in the terrible things humans do to each other. For my money that's scarier than any slasher film he could ever come up with.

Sean P. gave it a2:
Yes, believe the reviews. It's a stinker. The reason I'm even bothering to vote is 'cause I noticed James Beraldinelli's review. From what i can remember, this is the only movie he liked that I absolutely hated. Interesting.

Rodney M. gave it a9:
This movie is not ment to be a horror/thriller movie. It creates its own genre. The story has great detail and a great plot. It also scares you with your own fears. A great movie, see it.

Village, The Touchstone Pictures

Village, The
Touchstone Pictures