Village, The

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.