The Film We Don’t Speak Of – Revisiting M. Night Shyamalan’s Masterpiece ‘The Village’ 20 Years Later [Retrospective]

The trailer for the upcoming film Trap proudly declares it to be “a new experience in the world of M. Night Shyamalan.” This represents a huge shift in the public perception of him from about a decade ago when his name was so associated with disappointment that it was hidden from the marketing of his film After Earth. Thankfully for those of us that stuck by him through his notorious slump, he appears to be in a comfortable career spot, with his recent ventures such as Old and Knock at the Cabin garnering respectful reviews and passionate fans. The start of the shift from him being declared “the next Spielberg” after The Sixth Sense into Hollywood’s persona non grata can be traced to his controversial 2004 film The Village. Marketed as an nineteenth century-set horror film about a close-knit community under threat of invasion from mysterious creatures living in the surrounding woods, audiences were surprised – many to a level of outrage – to instead find it to be a gentle parable about the dangers of authoritarianism. Not to mention, the infamous double twists – the likes of which Shyamalan had become known for by that point – became the stuff of derisive legend, commonly mocked for how they supposedly negate everything that came before and render the film essentially pointless. In the 20 years since its release, discussion around it has mostly muted, with the film most often referred to as a curiosity that signaled the beginning of the end of Shyamalan’s initial hot streak. But to a small group of impassioned defenders (to which the author of this piece belongs), the film is not only Shyamalan’s best, but a powerfully effective tale about the perils of strict obedience and the corruptive abilities of power, made with a deliberate touch and captured with an eye for beauty. It’s a powerful, tragic story that’s both deeply upsetting to ponder and endlessly gorgeous to take in.

It’s impossible to discuss the film’s impact without divulging important plot points, so spoilers will be present throughout this piece. 

The Village, initially established as taking place in 1897, tells the story of a remote enclave in Pennsylvania surrounded by dense woods. There, the few inhabitants of the village live an idyllic, peaceful life. Everyone knows and helps each other, they’re governed by a trusted group of elders, and money doesn’t exist. The only thing keeping it from being a true utopia is the ominous presence lurking in the woods. There, humanoid beasts, referred to by the villagers as “Those We Don’t Speak Of,” live within the shadows of the dark forest. A delicate agreement exists between the humans and the creatures – the villagers will stay out of the woods, occasionally offering up farm animals as sacrifice, and in return, the creatures will leave them alone. Even still, the villagers follow specific rules to mitigate the chances of an invasion. Namely, they avoid the color red, which supposedly attracts them. By contrast, the color yellow is worn in proximity to the woods, as it’s said to ward them off.

As our story begins, the creatures appear to be making silent advances on the village in the night, leaving skinned animals behind as a warning. The elders stress the rules to their children and each other and, as they always seem to do, do their best to carry on with their tranquil lives. Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard in her first major film role not directed by her famous father Ron), the blind daughter of head elder Edward Walker (William Hurt), spends her days caring for Noah Percy (Adrien Brody), a developmentally disabled young man, and pursuing her not-so-hidden crush on Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix). After Those We Don’t Speak Of make a show of entering the village one evening, sending everyone into hiding in their cellars, Ivy and Lucius reveal their mutual feelings for each other to themselves and others. This joyous moment is undercut by a sudden act of violence that leads to the elders breaching protocol in order to save one of their own.

One factor that’s been lost to time in the film’s legacy is how, despite a near-instant backlash, the film was far from a failure. Upon its release on July 30, 2004, The Village topped the box office with $50.7 million, eventually going on to gross $114.1 million total domestic, with a worldwide total of $257.6 million. Not bad for a film made for around $70 million. And besides The Sixth Sense, it’s Shyamlan’s only film to receive recognition from the Academy with its Oscar nomination for James Newton Howard’s haunting original score. The public perception may not have been the best, but it’s doubtful that Touchstone Pictures was upset by the film’s performance.

Still, those damn twists seem to be all anyone talks about now. To get them out of the way – Noah stabs Lucius in a fit of jealousy after Ivy and Lucius announce their engagement. In order to save Lucius’s life, Edward makes the difficult decision to reveal the truth about the village to Ivy. Those We Don’t Speak Of do not exist, and are merely an invented tool (or “farce,” as Edward calls it) in order to keep the villagers put in their hamlet. Edward shows his daughter the menacing costumes that the elders disguise themselves with to drive his point home. Armed with this knowledge of her safety, Ivy is sent into the woods to seek medical help from the outside world. Upon reaching a barrier on the outer edge of the forest, an additional twist is revealed that only the audience, and not the visually-impaired Ivy, is made privy to. Rather than being set in 1897, it’s made clear that The Village in fact takes place in the then-present day of the early 21st century. It turns out the elders formed the village sometime in the late 1970s or early 80s after meeting at a grief counseling clinic, having all experienced a loved one’s violent death. Edward was a professor of American History who proposed the idea of extreme self-isolation to his fellow mourners as an act of preservation to shield themselves and their unborn children from a seemingly cruel world.

Once the initial shock of this wears off, most viewers likely begin trying to make sense of this sudden time jump and its implications. The dominant criticism directed at the film has always been “the experiment of the village is unsustainable,” as if that’s a bug and not a feature of the movie. In fact, this shortsightedness is the very point of the story. In depicting a commune founded upon a lie, maintained through additional lies, Shyamlan depicts society in miniature and sounds a warning bell about the dangers of authoritarian rulers. Of course the village won’t work in the long term. This is a story about leaders so corrupted by their own experiences that they’d rather bend the world around them to their will, failing to see how their assuredness as to the objective ideal of how they’d like to live their lives harms those whom they rule over – in this case, their own children. They think they know best, like so many real life leaders, and as we see again and again, societies built upon lies and deceit will eventually fall, or at the very least splinter and fracture away from the original intention of their founding. 

The small society that exists within the village is a very specific type of supposed utopia. Namely, it’s entirely white. This casting choice (especially for a film written and directed by a person of color) additionally highlights the manner in which leaders have a penchant for favoring those most like them. This Caucasian, heterosexual fantasy isn’t far off from the societal visions that some of the most diabolically evil dictatorial figures have attempted to make real throughout history. Not to mention, a level of xenophobic hyperbole is baked into the very laws of the village. The elders essentially tell their children not to cross the border as there lives a violent race which looks different from them, and that these undesirable others will take any opportunity to penetrate the boundaries and steal their resources. Clearly, Shyamalan was taking inspiration from a directly post-9/11 America – a time when politicians used a violent tragedy to whip the country into a patriotic frenzy, at the expense of anyone who didn’t fit the default mode of the ideal white, straight, obedient citizen.

Once all truths about The Village are revealed, the film essentially stops being a horror movie. Instead, it becomes clear that the elders are crafting an existence wherein their children are living in a real life horror movie. Fear is the dominant tool used to exert control over those they supposedly love, and this is made even more upsetting by the fact that the elders are doing so to ostensibly shield their children from a world of horrors. Their protective instincts have been twisted away from their original purpose to the point that their constructed reality ends up killing one of their own. On Ivy’s journey through the woods, she encounters what appears to be an aggressive monster, which makes her recall her father’s passing remark that “There did exist rumors of creatures in the woods.” A short stand-off eventually leads to the beast falling into a hole, killing it. It’s later revealed to be Noah, who had discovered one of the elder’s Those We Don’t Speak Of suits and set off into the woods after Ivy. Edward’s caveat about the potential for the existence of the creatures, even at the moment of his revealing the truth about them to his own daughter, shows that even to the very end, the elders will support their village’s great lie. And when they learn of Noah’s death, Edward chillingly tells the dead boy’s parents “Your son has made our stories real.” The elders stumble into an opportunity to continue their poisonous experiment merely by luck. There’s no way they could’ve predicted that one of their children would be born blind, and thus, would be able to perpetuate the village’s scapegoating lies after she supposedly met one of the creatures, even after being told that they’re fictional. We’ve seen those in possession of power use singular sympathetic events to oppress entire populations and carry out violent mandates – from the imprisonment of people of Japanese descent after the Pearl Harbor attacks, to America’s decades-long decimation of the Middle East after 9/11, all the way up to Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza after last October 7th. With The Village, Shyamalan shows how situations that benefit rulers can often present themselves by accident, causing said rulers to lean into the favorable opportunities to which such events can lead.

And yet, as with our real world, there’s still the chance for basic decency to overcome the power of weaponized fear. This hope is personified by the youthful passion of Ivy and Lucius, whose love story is positioned at the film’s center. Their affection for each other is immediately apparent, although they each present it in different ways. Ivy does very little to hide her feelings, to the point where Lucius even calls her out on this:

Ivy: “Why can you not say what is in your head?”

Lucius: “Why can you not stop saying what is in yours?”

Lucius, on the other hand, keeps such thoughts to himself. In an early discussion with his mother Alice (Sigourney Weaver), he mentions that he believes Edward has feelings for her. When she questions this, Lucius says he’s reached this conclusion because “He never touches you.” Notably, Lucius and Ivy do not touch each other until a pivotal scene that closes the film’s first act. This moment occurs during a shocking evening raid by Those We Don’t Speak Of. Lucius is shown quickly moving through the village, helping those in need as they scramble to safety in their homes. At the same time, Ivy waits at her front door with her hand extended, hoping that Lucius will come and shelter with them. Just as a creature approaches Ivy, Lucius swoops in at the last minute and grabs her hand, pulling her inside. This is the first time in the entire movie that they’re shown touching, and the swelling score and sudden slow motion editing emphasize the importance of this moment. Even after they’ve hidden themselves in the cellar, they keep their hands held together tightly. Much like the boundaries of the village, the unspoken border keeping the two of them at a distance has been breached. They no longer keep their mutual affection for each other hidden, instead allowing love to trump the fear – manufactured by their parents – that otherwise rules their lives. Their love represents the actual ideal that society should be aiming for, as opposed to the false paradise that the elders have constructed. As Edward says later in the film, “The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.”

All of this thematic depth and narrative richness is impressive on its own, but what makes the film truly great is the way in which its story is captured. Shyamalan presents the world with a considered pace, allowing the film to luxuriate in the setting and thus acclimating the audience to the patient speed of life at which the villagers operate. The impressive set design and construction creates a world that feels genuinely lived-in and fully planned. And the cinematography by the legendary Roger Deakins is astonishing. He makes extensive use of longer takes, accentuating the aforementioned pace of life in the village, which makes the few moments where he uses a handheld camera even more jarring. This shift is most often deployed to convey a sense of anxiety, emulating the feeling that the villagers have whenever something unexpected enters into their curated world. Oftentimes during important scenes – such as the first kiss between Ivy and Lucius or Noah’s attack on Lucius – the camera will drift away from the action and rest on a banal object, such as an empty chair. In a film all about control over what people are permitted to see or experience, Deakins’s camera subtly reflects that dominance by literally not allowing the real world audience to bear witness to crucial moments. It’s the type of genius filmmaking that rewards multiple viewings – with the knowledge of what’s to come, the choices made by Shyamalan fully reveal themselves to be brilliantly manipulative. Not to mention, it’s simply a gorgeous film. It’s supremely autumnal, both in the colors of nature and the village’s obsession with red and yellow. These colors stand out well against the general earth tones of the village and the simple dyed fabrics that its inhabitants wear. And these color choices are captured well by Deakins and his famous mastery of light and shadow. 

Quite literally underscoring the whole film is James Newton Howard’s lush, plaintive, Oscar-nominated musical score. He places extra emphasis on the violin, bringing that instrument with all its folksy, sad qualities to the forefront (the violin is so integral to the success of the film that Hilary Hahn, the featured violinist, is the first name to be listed in the end credits after Shyamalan). Howard’s music is showcased best during the scene where Lucius rescues Ivy from the encroaching creature at her front door, with the tension of the pulsing style of music broken the moment Lucius grabs Ivy’s hand, at which point the violin bursts into breathtaking arpeggios. And once they’re safe in the cellar, the beautifully mournful theme is heard in full as we see their still-clasped hands, emphasizing the hopeful but dangerous nature of their love.

The opening credits reveal an impressive roster of A-listers and esteemed thespians, including Weaver, Hurt, Brendan Gleeson, Cherry Jones, and Celia Weston. And yet, the two young actors featured in the central doomed romance make the greatest impression. Joaquin Phoenix reunited with Shyamlan after his excellent work in Signs. Here, he plays a combination of hesitant and headstrong, two conflicting emotions that pull his character in different directions. This inner turmoil makes him even more sympathetic, and Phoenix’s natural sheepish magnetism is perfectly exploited. 

The then-unknown Bryce Dallas Howard is truly spectacular as the main character, making a confident leap into the status of leading role. Her famed ability for emotional recall is used throughout, with her tears often tumbling down her face with abandon. And yet, even when her character is distressed or in danger, Howard makes it clear that Ivy is still totally in control of her situation. Even her red hair reflects her personality – she always has the “bad color” on her person, showing her defiance and assured nature. 

Unfortunately, not everyone in the ensemble is as up to the task as Phoenix and Howard. Adrien Brody followed up his surprise Oscar win for The Pianist with his performance in this film as the developmentally disabled Noah. It’s a tough performance to take in, for obvious reasons. He’s totally committed to the role, which may be admirable, but that doesn’t mean it’s not hard to watch. Still, he’s not in too much of the runtime, making him more of a temporary distraction than an active problem for the success of the overall film. And William Hurt is totally off-the-leash here, with his occasional penchant for overacting fully on display in his performance as Ivy’s father and village elder Edward.

Near the opening of the film, a red-robed creature is shown reflected in a brook. In the film’s final minutes, that moment is bookended with an identical shot, this time of Ivy in her yellow robe. The intention is clear – the most fearsome monsters are merely man and his creations, and all it takes is a shift in perspective to come to this realization, thus robbing those acting with self-centered goals of their power and influence. The Village is a rich and breathtakingly beautiful film about humanity’s worst tendencies to act selfishly in self-preservation rather than working to make the world a better place for all. It’s a warning to individuals to look on those in power with reasonable skepticism and to not let oppressive leaders distract from the wonders of the world, namely the strengths of community, connection, and love. When she encounters a modern-day park ranger upon exiting the protected nature reserve in which the village is enclosed, Ivy remarks “You have kindness in your voice, I did not expect that.” Humanity naturally gravitates toward goodness, and it’s up to each of us to keep that truth in mind, despite how often frightened authority figures want us to think otherwise.

The Village was released by Buena Vista Pictures on July 30, 2004. It is currently available to rent on Amazon.