The Village

I rented THE VILLAGE from On Demand. I can't say that this is M. Night Shayamalanaolin's best movie. But even a bad movie from M. Night is better than most.

The suspense is agonizing as the viewer is forced to wait and see where M. Night will place his cameo. Oh and then of course there is the suspense created by the story, for the story and through the story.

The unfortunately named Bryce Dallas Howard gave a compelling performance as the girl who sees the world through the blind eyes of hope and love. I found myself crying with her and for her more than once because her acting was so believable. It's hard to play blind but she didn't do too badly. My uncle is blind, really blind, so I grew up knowing how blind people look when they talk to you. I have never seen an actor accurately portray blindness. With that said, she didn't too badly. There were times when you actually believed she was blind and others when she didn't look the slightest bit blind.

Movies and television would have you believe that without the cane and dark sunglasses you can't tell when someone is unsighted. That's not true. Blind people look blind. I've met several and there was never any mistake that they could not see. They just don't use their eyes and that has a very specific look - a glazed over, not using their eyes kind of look.

Still Bryce Dallas Howard did a good job. Her character's name was IVY - a much better name than her given one. Other performances of note came from Joaquin Pheoniz, Michael Pitt and Cherry Jones. Sigourney Weaver was okay - still stunning even without makeup. William Hurt remains to this day one of the most OVERRATED screen actors but he was well cast as the unspoken leader of THE VILLAGE.

I recommend the movie highly. Yes. It does have a silly aspect to it but I would still like you to encourage the able imagine of M. Night by watching his films.