The Hindu Business Line : Not a real shocker!

Manoj Night Shyamalan's film The Village doesn't have a single heart-stopping moment. With just a series of sequences that create some unease, the film is a huge let-down.

A still from the film The Village.

A pastoral haven, ringed with tall trees. This is a place where men work. Women chop and sew. Kids play. And yet, all's not well with this little village. Red blossoms are uprooted and buried; red is a bad colour. Everyone wears yellow, which is a good colour. It keeps them safe from the creatures that live in the woods, surrounding the village. If anyone tries to leave, they vanish, never to be seen again.

Manoj Night Shyamalan's The Village takes him forward on the path he set out with his Sixth Sense, a film that revived the horror genre, which had gone into an eclipse worldwide. Shyamalan's horror had heart, and an intriguing mysticism, which appealed enormously to the audiences in the West, grown tired of computer-generated robots mutating at the speed of light, and laser weapons winking across screens.

Shyamalan went back to the original concept that underlies all horror classics — evil resides everywhere. Monsters exist under your bed. Do take a look before you sleep, or you may never wake up. All extra-terrestrials are not cute, cuddly critters that want `to go home'.

All his stories are imbued with a strong sense of the inexplicable — things happen that no rational mind can conceive of; there's something bigger than us, directing the scheme of things. That we just act out on stage, the lines we have been sent out with, before the final curtain-call.

The story-telling skills the director displayed had to do with his Indian roots, his US upbringing, and his film-school training. The Sixth Sense quickly became the kind of film that scholars and critics and viewers all have opinions on, and turned Shyamalan into a much sought-after scriptwriter and director.

His subsequent films Unbreakable and Signs cemented his position as the man who could deliver horror with a twist. A slew of new-age horror movies around the world, in the last couple of years, especially the Japanese Ringu owe allegiance to Shyamalan's brand of horror: solid story, winsome characters, and a shocker (some would say shlocker) end.

Ringu has further spawned language versions. The Ring has a similar chiller climax, when the straggly-haired woman climbs out of the TV, and strangles the good-looking lead player, leaving wet feet marks on the floor. By comparison, The Village appears fairly tame. Its monster has long claws, fangs, and is cloaked in red, a Red Riding Hood gone wrong.

The film doesn't have a single heart-stopping moment, just a series of sequences, which create some unease, and when the secret is unravelled, and we know that the monsters were part of a fairytale's make-believe, it is a huge let-down.

Which is why, perhaps, despite its solid US opening (about $50 million, way below the $60-million debut of Signs), it hasn't done as well as expected. It could be because viewers are staying away from period pieces ... The Village is set in late-19th century rural Pennsylvania. This summer, big-budget studio bets failed: Troy, which cost Warner Bros $200 million, Van Helsing in which Universal put in $140 million, and Disney's similar-budget King Arthur (yet to be released in India), have all performed way below expectations.

Horror movies from Bollywood have suddenly turned into horror tales, with the failure of the much-hyped Rakht. A joint production between industrialist MP Vijay Mallya and actor Suniel Shetty, the film tried telling the story of a tarot-card reader who can foretell the future. Tried is the operative word, because Mahesh Manjrekar flubbed it royally, despite the presence of Bipasha Basu, as well as `item numbers' by Abhishek Bachchan in dangerous green shades, and Yana Gupta.

Like any other genre, horror movies need to be underpinned with a story you can believe in: the more the surround sounds are real, the more scary are the creaks, when they occur. There's nothing you can connect with in Rakht: it's all cosmetic, all surface, and all pretty ghastly.

Dhoom macha dey

Big brands deliver. So do big production houses. Which is why the industry looks forward to movies from such houses as Yashraj. The buzz about Dhoom is still resounding: the film, starring Abhishek Bachchan, John Abraham and Uday Chopra, had a bumper opening, grossing a staggering Rs 1.5 crore in its first week in Delhi-Uttar Pradesh. And this from a no-star cast movie: Dhoom's selling points were its slick looks, its macho men, and its mean machines.

The movie has a very clear target: boys and men, and women who are interested in bikes and bikers. No expense has been spared on the sets. Its leading ladies, Esha Deol and Rimi Sen, look as polished as the bikes. But the real heroes are the male leads, and the film's youthful, devil-may-care, take-life-as-it-comes attitude. There's not much of a story, but with a film that is styled with such slickness, who cares?

And what's more, it's given Abhishek Bachchan his first bonafide hit.

Response can be sent to life@thehindu.co.in

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