The films of M. Night Shyamalan, celebrated director of The Sixth Sense, come with a certain expectation. He makes stylishly creepy, clue-laden thrillers spiked with a peculiar twist. Sometimes you see them coming, sometimes you don’t but you know there will always be one. With that in mind, expectation hangs like a dank fog around The Village where William Hurt presides over an isolated community. It is said that evil lurks in dark woodland adjacent to their hamlet, a woodland elders will not let people enter for their own safety. In a bizarre echo of Harry Potter, ‘those we don’t speak of’ will stay on their side as long as the villagers keep to theirs. It’s an uneasy truce that starts failing when skinned animals and obscure markings are found in the township. Yet Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix) sees it differently and, confident that he will not be harmed, challenges the elders to let him travel. They don’t. A subtext of abusive governance maintained by a culture of fear is used by Shyamalan to construct big ideas. While The Village has a nervy feel, mostly generated by Roger Deakin’s exquisite, claustrophobic cinematography, those expecting a fright-fest will be disappointed. The film’s focus is not with the paranormal – real or imagined – but with perception and dread and how those emotions can be manipulated for ‘the greater good’. As surprise has been dampened by expectation, The Village rides on the vibrancy Phoenix and Bryce Dallas Howard bring to their roles in the face of dour turns by the elders (Sigourney Weaver is particularly stiff). Expect Shyamalan, not an actor’s director, to create exciting concepts. Don’t expect him to fill them with big, exciting emotions. // COLIN FRASER