I finally found the time and interest to watch M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village.  What a waste of time.

Shyamalan’s formulaic approach to movie-making has become overly redundant and tiring — and he’s only made four movies!  We all expect the twisted surprise at the end, so we now spend our time figuring out what it might be rather than actually watching the movie.  For The Village, that was too simple a task.

There are no monsters in the forest; they are in fact the village elders who use the ploy to maintain control over the other villagers.  The village exists in the present day despite all the signs to the contrary; it’s called escapism.  There is the same cheap self-realization with the main characters that we have seen in his previous films.  The impressive cast is unable to bring anything to the film because of the lack of any worthwhile plot and the overwhelmingly quirky character development.

One-word review?  Yawn.

The truth is that Shyamalan continues to make the same film over and over again, each time replacing certain plot elements and characters with new material in the hopes that no one will actually notice that it’s still The Sixth Sense no matter what you call it.  It’s ultimately nothing more than recycled material, the same old tedious story.  His perfunctory approach to filmmaking has become all too predictable.

Don’t waste your time on this one.  If you already have, I’m so very sorry.