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What's great about The Village is that it's a metaphor. Think : Culture of Fear. Remind you of any large North American country? Do the dangers we fear really exist? How often do you turn on the news and see footage of Hick Town, IA running anti-terror drills because they've been so indoctrinated to the dangers of the world.
Is it really best for them to be so afraid? After all, like the one guy says, sorrow has a way of finding you, no matter how far you run.
Anyway, I really enjoyed the movie, and thought it was his deepest, most thought-provoking yet. Of all his movies, Signs was, in my opinion, the weakest, though it had a deeper level as well. Mel Gibson's faith was the pivotal issue -- remember he's a former Catholic clergyman who'd denied his God due to the death of his wife. But the connections to his past throughout the current crisis led him back to God and restored his faith, which culminated in the final scene as he was putting his Catholic garb back on.
Unbreakable was obviously supposed to signal that there lies extraordinary ability in all of us; we just have to recognize it. It also shows a longing for dichotomy; that is, Samuel L. Jackson's desire to be the antithesis of Bruce Willis is symbolic of man's tendency to think of nature as a system of opposing tendencies.
The Sixth Sense needs no real explaining, because it was his most basic film and doesn't require much thought to get it and enjoy it. The rest require deeper processing, and in most cases, repeated viewing, before they can really be appreciated.
What you have to get past is that these aren't supposed to be low-budget cheesy horror flicks. The fear and psychological discomfort is supposed to be more ingrained in the psyche on a deeper level than knee-jerk reactions to oversized bloody puppets jumping out of the shadows. These are psychological thrillers, if anything, not slasher movies.
He's by far the most intriguing director out there right now, and I'm looking forward to his next movie, "Lady in the Water": "The superintendent of an apartment building discovers a sea nymph in the building's pool." (FROM IMDB
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