The Village

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. With Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Joaquin Phoenix, Bryce Dallas Howard. A series of events tests the beliefs of a small isolated countryside village.

The Village (2004) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more.

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M. Night Shyamalan's latest thriller features a puritanical village isolated from neighboring towns by fiercly foreboding woods.

Parents need to know that The Village is a 2004 M. Night Shyamalan movie in which an austere Pennsylvania hamlet sequestered from the rest of the world begins to experience a series of bizarre and violent events when a young man dares to try and venture beyond the confines of the hamlet. This is a very tense and scary thriller that may be too much for some tweens and young teens. There are scenes with nightmarish imagery, including animal corpses, and the demonic imagery of mysterious monsters in red. Some viewers may be concerned about the portrayal of a developmentally-delayed and possibly disturbed character, who is shown stabbing another character in the chest. There is talk of violent acts witnessed and experienced by the characters in the long ago past, including rape and murder, as well as talk of suicide.

If all you're looking for in the new nail-biter from suspense guru M. Night Shyamalan is an ending to out-twist The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs, The Village is no place to visit. The only way the climax of this blend of horror, romance and political allegory can come as a

"The Village" is 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. M. Night Shyamalan, the writer-director, has been successful in evoking horror from minimalist stories, as in "Signs," which if you think about it rationally is absurd -- but you get too involved to think rationally. He is a director of considerable skill who evokes stories out of moods, but this time, alas, he took the day off.

M. Night Shyamalan, the creative mind behind The Sixth Sense and Signs, wrote and directed this characteristically atmospheric thriller. The rustic village of Covington is a small town in rural Pennsylvania that is home to 60 souls. The citizens of Covington lead a quiet and peaceful life, but not without an unusual caveat -- terrible creatures lurk just outside the borders of the village, and the people of Covington have reached an agreement of sorts with the beasts, in which they are allowed to go about their business as long as they never cross the village's boundaries. However, this precarious balance is upset when a headstrong young man, Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix), decides to find out what lies outside Covington, and unwittingly invites the wrath of the creatures upon the town. The Village also stars Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Adrien Brody, Judy Greer, and Bryce Dallas Howard; both Kirsten Dunst and Ashton Kutcher were at one time attached to the project, but both left the cast before filming began.

The Village is a 2004 American psychological horror[citation needed] film, written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and starring Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, Bryce Dallas Howard, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, and Brendan Gleeson. The film is about a village whose inhabitants live in fear of creatures inhabiting the woods beyond it referred to as "Those We Don't Speak Of." Like other films written and directed by Shyamalan from the same time period, The Village has a twist ending.