|
With both The Sixth Sense and The Village had the benefit of minimal chatter about the movies before seeing them. We saw The Sixth Sense on opening night before it really impacted and become a cultural phenomenon. I don't recall the advertising campaign and we didn't have a TV then so I probably wouldn't have seen much of it. We went because of a recommendation of a friend in the industry who simply said "you want to see this movie on opening night." (A similar tip had me watching The Matrix similarly unspoiled on opening day before anybody knew why you'd want to). I had no idea what it was about or that there was a twist ending that people were avoiding revealing. Therefore I wasn't looking for it and the surface story was solid enough that I didn't have any reason for my mind to wander and start considering such things. The great thing about The Sixth Sense is that even if you lop of the final reveal it is still a decent movie and storie. This isn't true of The Village.
By the time of The Village was doing MousePlanet's movie reviews so I saw it with the press the night before (pretty much every review published in newspapers on Friday had been written overnight after 8:00 p.m. screenings for the press). Obviously, since when we walked in we were handed a piece of paper saying something like "we strongly request that you not reveal the ending of the movie in your reviews" it was hard not to start the movie looking for clues about what was really going on. I just found the whole idea stupid and the surface story doesn't work without the second layer so it simply didn't work for me.
I wouldn't be so quick to ascribe the worldview of Signs to Shyamalan himself. If nothing else he is cogent in discussing his films and says they aren't really any kind of reflection of his psyche or beliefs. Just ideas that he finds interesting.
|