The Village

[gmonkey42]

Good LORD, those things were scary. Even knowing they were just people in monster suits, not just because it was a movie but knowing that actually in the narrative they weren't really monsters - I still had to cover my eyes and, like, look through the gap between two fingers when they showed the monster suit in the shed and throughout the whole chase sequence in the woods (that's right - I couldn't even look at the empty suit hanging in the shed even though I knew what was coming when they were outside the shed - incidentally, how the hell did Ivy know what the monster claws felt like? Wouldn't it have been a lot simpler for him to tell her? "I can't tell you, it's something that has to be shown." Bullcrap. It's easy to tell her, just go: "Ivy? The monsters aren't real. It's just us in monster suits." And THEN show her the suit so it doesn't freak her out. Duh.) I totally didn't get - and I should have - that that was Noah, until they cut to the bit where his parents found he'd escaped. I thought it was something/someone else, also in a monster suit. Because it didn't occur to me that he'd had access to a monster suit.

As for feeling jerked around - I can see how I would have if I hadn't known from the beginning that it actually takes place in modern times. But it didn't seem so bad to me, because I expectecd it.

I think Ivy is a great movie heroine. She's brave and I thought it was cool how she cleverly killed him. Because I was mostly covering my eyes at that point, I wasn't sure - did she just find that hole again by chance or did she lead him there deliberately? I think it's the latter.

Why the hell did William Hurt's character (can't remember the name) send Ivy instead of just going himself? Wouldn't that have been much safer, in a number of ways? He could've sauntered out there and gotten the medicine (provided he didn't run into Noah but even if he had, he'd have realized who it was and probably stood a good chance of defending himself) and then come back with some horror story about almost getting killed by the monsters but then they let him through because he was innocent and he was just going for medicine, like Loo-shus said. (That's how I thought Malfoy Sr.'s name was pronounced until the CoS previews came out.) I mean, I can understand sending Ivy if he or one of the other elders isn't going, because she's blind and she wouldn't get as clear an idea of the difference. But why the hell wouldn't Lucius' mother go? She'd rather let him die?

I guess the problem with one of the elders going would've been that people would start to think you can get through OK if you have a good reason. Whereas by sending Ivy (not knowing she'd get attacked), they could tell the villagers that the monsters only let her through because she's blind. SO I guess it makes sense them not going.

Why did that ranger guy keep the watch? Maybe she would've been upset if he'd refused.

I thought it was odd how they didn't show the head-ranger(was he William Hurt's character's brother?)'s face. Then they showed the reflection of it in the glass. He didn't look that much like William Hurt. And we get it; they just have WALKER written everywhere. And Ivy's name is Ivy Elizabeth Walker... OK, actually, having her say that then was justified because I'd forgotten that that was their name but the repeated zooming in on WALKER WILDLIFE PRESERVE on the jeep was going a little far. I mean, I'd noticed it when they first showed it; as soon as she said "Ivy Elizabeth Walker," I was like "ohhh".

The whole thing just seemed like a lot of trouble for the elders to go through when they could've just become Amish. Or do the Amish not accept newcomers? You'd think they would. And if that guy's an historian then how did he fool himself into thinking there was no violence in the 19th century? And if they're that isolated then how do they get raw materials? Like metal? I didn't even see any sign of a blacksmith. I didn't see any signs of much manufacturing of any kind, come to think of it. It would've been a lot simpler just to start a hippie commune.

Oh and also? Considering they're "those we do not speak of," they sure speak of them a lot.

Here's my impression of what the scary-ass monsters looked like (with a human-sized stick figure for scale):


I mean, the looking like an oversized porcupine isn't scary. But the shriveled pig faces and especially the claws and the way the claws move creeped me the hell out.

All kidding aside, the monsters were really well done. I didn't expect to be shown so much of them so early on. It's become far more common for the film to show us next to nothing until the very end. But we're used to that; that isn't scary any more. From the first glimpse of the monster running under the watchtower they were seriously freaking scary because we saw just enough of them for them to be scary.