The Village
Short description
The Village is set in Covington, a small rural community in Pennsylvania that lives cut off from the outside world. Its residents believe the surrounding woods are inhabited by dangerous creatures, and they follow strict rules to keep the truce intact: staying away from the forest, using certain colors to ward off or avoid attracting the beings, and responding when the alert bell sounds. Lucius Hunt, a stubborn young man, grows tired of the isolation and asks the village elders for permission to travel beyond the boundary. His wish to leave sets off a series of events that change the community.
M. Night Shyamalan directed and wrote the film, his fourth feature in a career of fifteen directing credits, arriving between Signs and Lady in the Water. The cast includes Bryce Dallas Howard as Ivy Walker, Joaquin Phoenix as Lucius Hunt, Adrien Brody, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver and Brendan Gleeson. The production, made with 34 credited cast members and 160 credited crew, cost about 60 million dollars and earned roughly 257 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.6/10 from around 296,000 votes, on TMDB 6.5/10 from about 4,730 votes, while the critics' rating stands at 5.8/10 from 221 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- Due to a scheduling conflict, actor Ashton Kutcher relinquished his role to Adrian Brody.
- According to actress Sigourney Weaver, she was plagued by terrible nightmares for two weeks after reading the script.
- Actress Bryce Dallas Howard was cast without traditional auditions. M. Night Shyamalan was satisfied with what he saw on stage and immediately invited the actress to his project.
- Initially, the film had the working title “The Woods,” but it turned out that another studio had already secured the rights to use that title for its own project.
- Filming lasted about two months, and the film's total budget was $60 million.
- As in his previous films, director M. Night Shyamalan appears on screen for a few seconds in a small cameo at the end of the film.
- To better understand their characters, all the actors lived in a training camp in a 19th-century atmosphere for a week.
- In the end credits, the inscription appears: “Those We Don't Speak Of – Joey Anaya and Kevin Foster”.
- The village of Covington, in a forested valley, was completely built from scratch by the film crew in 11 weeks for filming.
- Filming took place in Philadelphia and the surrounding areas in Pennsylvania (Chester County), as well as in Centerville, Delaware, and Pedricktown, New Jersey. Filming began on October 8, 2003, and wrapped up in mid-December.
- Bryce Dallas Howard replaced Kirsten Dunst in the cast. Kirsten, meanwhile, preferred to work on "Elizabethtown".
- The film's screenplay was written under the influence of two completely dissimilar plots: the play Wuthering Heights and the original "King Kong" from 1933. The only thing these two plots have in common is groups of people living next to aggressive creatures.
- The role of Lucius Hunt was originally written for Joaquin Phoenix, with whom Shyamalan had established a warm friendship during the filming of "Signs".
- Initially, the rating board wanted to give the film an "R" rating. The reason was a single sound effect. However, this did not happen because the effect was never actually used in the film.
- The director initially decided to design "He Who Must Not Be Named" as a monster resembling a bipedal lion with a large, shaggy head, but after viewing the created image, he decided it was completely implausible and did not align with the concept of the film.
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