The Village/Headscratchers

The Village

• Okay, this has been bothering me since I've seen the movie years ago (spoilers ahead). What was the freaking point of the "monster" chasing Ivy scene almost at the end of the movie? By that time, both Ivy and we, the audience, knew that the monsters stories were a fraud, so what was the point? To me that's one of the biggest failures of the movie, because the scene is well done and it would have been perfectly scary if we still believed in the monster story, so why the director put it AFTER the big revelation and not before? In addition, why was Ivy even scared if she knew the whole truth?
  • To make us think we/they might be wrong, that there really was something out there, or that something had adopted the guise of the monsters since coming up with them. One of the major themes of the film revolves around what you risk when you choose to abandon something that has kept you safe: for the village elders, they gave up their modern lives to pursue a better one for their children, which left them open to diseases that modern medicine can easily cure. Ivy put aside her childhood fears so she could be brave enough to go into the woods, which left her vulnerable to everything else she might have encountered. As to why Ivy was afraid: she was blind and something was chasing her, why shouldn't she be scared?
    • This troper thinks that the point of that scene was to make the audience guess 'who' was the last creature before it is confirmed by Noah's parents finding the room empty. As Ivy's father said there was someone else involved but they didn't know who - the matter of the stock being slaughtered (watch again the flashback scene when Ivy's father explains all the ruse). In that last 'monster' scene the question is no long whether or not the creatures are real but 'who would profit from Ivy failing her mission?'.

• How did the girl get over a giant fence?
  • She climbed up the vines to get out, and up the ladder Kevin provided to get back in.

• Why were drugs kept in a thin, glass case?
  • Because the Walker Preserve is, by implication, isolated, patrolled, and difficult to get into. Not much security needed.
  • That "glass case" was probably a fridge (most medication must be refrigerated when it's stored), the guard was probably briefed on the situation to some degree as he was employed by the company which one of The Elders owned ("If someone comes from the forest dressed in period clothes, humour them and don't ask questions") or at least that's the way I interpreted it. While I have the edit page up; monsters would be more scary than an animal (animals can be tamed, slaughtered and/or eaten after all, then again if they didn't know much about an animal which inhabited the forest it may as well have been a monster) and (to answer another question) could bloody well live as long as they want it to.

• Why not say "the woods are filled with wild animals," rather than creating an absurd conspiracy?
  • Wild animals can be defeated by sharp objects, and they wouldn't give the elders the sort of insane authority they had to arbitrarily forbid things the "monsters" didn't like.

• Why did the policeman grab random pills rather than calling a doctor?
  • He wasn't a policeman, he was a specifically hired and presumably trained Ranger. Probably with some EMT or Vet training/experience.

• How would elders explain the consistent presence of supplies and food, since they had deemed importation impossible?
  • The food's not an issue, as they were clearly farming it themselves. Supplies? They probably cherry-picked the technology they employed to be extremely long-lasting and easy to repair by hand.

• Why did the guy in a monster costume die from falling in a 3 foot pit?]]
  • Sharp spikes, I thought, or fell into his own weapon. Whatever it was caused his torso to leak a lot of blood. And it was more like 6 feet.

• How long did the elders expect to continue their conspiracy? Everyone would be extremely incredulous if the monster survived a hundred years!
  • multiple monsters. Nobody knew how many there really were, or if they were even mortal.
  • I guess the real question, who would the "monsters" be? A new generation that was disclosed of things? Or maybe they are betting that the legend would be enough?
  • Perhaps whoever is the last elder alive would select one or two younger people two be the Secret Keepers who would one day pass down the secret to their own offspring.

• Why did they not create consistent settings? Their village had medieval huts, Victorian gaslamps and Renaissance era rules.
  • The elders wanted to create a culture that was simple, peaceful and liveable, not a historical replica.
  • Why would they need consitence? The whole point is that no one would leave the place.

• How would a completely insular town, only using the outside world for supplies, survive? A single disease could completely destroy it. Inbreeding is inevitable as the citizens become consistently less diverse and families intersect.
  • I seriously doubt the Elders had expected the Village to go undetected for as long as it did, let alone long enough for inbreeding to be a concern.

• Why would the government allow this insane plan? It is essentially treason, as the town has annexed itself and ignores state or federal law. What stupid, lazy writing.
  • Who says the government was ever told what they were up to?
  • If the government knew about it, it probably wouldn't be allowed. The Village is essentially a cult using the fear of monsters to keep some of its inhabitants from leaving "for their own good."
  • Seriously, in a post-Heaven's Gate, a post-Waco, a Post-9/11 world NO local or federal authorities thought to investigate a group of people mysterious missing for nearly 30 years and also a reserve that is purposely kept isolated from the rest of the world?
    • It could be done, depending on how they carried it out. Lots of people go missing in the U.S. every day; some do so voluntarily. As it isn't against the law to go missing, the authorities have the attitude that, if an adult wants to disappear (and he isn't a fugitive or something), let him, and they will only get involved if there is evidence of foul play. The "elders" could have simply given notice at their jobs, conceled their leases or sold their houses without leaving a forwarding address, or done other things that indicated that they were voluntarily disappearing. Some of the pitfalls that lead to voluntarily missing people being found, such as forged papers or phony Social Security numbers (which are illegal), clearly wouldn't apply here. Moreover, it could have been that the "elders" staggered their disappearance, so as to decrease suspicion. Additionally, the "elders" have been missing for decades, well before Waco, 9/11, or anything else like that happened. The elders' case files, if any had existed, would have gone cold by that time, and no one would think to re-open them just because a completely unrelated incident just happened in another state.
    • As far as the reserve goes, it. too, could be done, depending on where it was located (such as in a large rural area out West). As long as there were no red flags raised (as the Branch Davidians in Waco had done by stockpiling weapons), and there was a confederate on the outside to keep all legal matters (such as taxes or 501(c)(3) status, or wildlife preserve status) in order (a well-paid law firm or trustee could serve such a purpose), the elders could carry on with such a plan for a long time.

• How did this village maintain the illusion of being in the past given that aircraft flying overhead is a fairly common occurrence?
  • Handwaved in the movie. One of the elders apparently bribed the FAA to make the place a no fly zone. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
  • I don't know how easy/difficult it would be to bribe someone to get a place designated as a no-fly zone, but I think it's earier post-9/11 to get something designated as a no-fly zone legitimately. Disneyland is now a no-fly zone becasue it's supposedly a risk for terrorist attacks, but Legoland is not.
  • I thought it was because they'd had the land declared a protected wildlife reserve. There really are places where planes aren't allowed to fly over, because they're breeding grounds for endangered species which would be disturbed by the noise.
  • Why exactly were they pretending to be "in the past" in the first place? It's not like the children had some kind of intrinsic knowledge of what the 1800s were supposed to be like, to say nothing of later centuries. The whole idea is like a sociological version of Meanwhile in the Future, or Evolutionary Levels for civilizations. The villagers could have ditched any idea of following exactly along with any past society (I mean, what would they do when their village caught up to the years they didn't like?) and just created a social construct that included everything they wanted, explained airplanes, and discouraged people from leaving. The false year and more direct analogy to "simpler times" were clearly attached for the audience's dubious benefit in selling the pre-twist perception, hence the date being established by an in-context tombstone instead of an on-screen dateline.
    • For the audience, probably. If it were set in the present, we would have asked "why not use the radio or mobile phones to call in the police" - or even "where are all the tellies". Mobile phones are a huge huge problem for every horror plot!
  • They probably thought the airplanes were flying monsters. They believed in walking monsters, why not big flying ones that roar through the sky, and just happen to be shiny?

• While we're on the subject of the blind girl, just how blind was she supposed to be? Okay, I can accept that she wouldn't be able to see the monster costumes when led into the shed because it was relatively dark, but she clearly couldn't see other things in broad daylight; suggesting she was either totally blind, or at most had such poor vision that she should have needed either a cane or a guide to get around. However, she has neither yet she is still able to run around both fields and forests with no problems whatsoever. Despite the other problems with the film, this is just beyond belief.
  • I always figured she knew most of the village well enough to walk it with her eyes closed... well, yeah, and running was either being really scared because of the monsters, or simply having fun with the other guy and not thinking of the possibility of an unexpected gopher hole.
    • Any blind Troper please correct this, but I'm fairly sure people who are blind from early childhood have that kind of caution absolutely ingrained well before their teens. Particularly considering parents of handicapped children are often even more protective in terms of urging them to learn caution (although the characters in the film don't seem to be very caring parents, as previously noted).
    • I've read articles about blind people using sonar, i.e. making a clicking noise and listening for the echoes. Apparently this is surprisingly effective.
    • At a conference for blind people a (blind) speaker pointed out that there are many different kinds of blindness. Thus someone with absolutely no peripheral vision will be able to read, but will require a white cane as it's just not possible to sweep the fovea over your path in real time.
    • Actually, I talked with a blind friend about the running down the hill thing and she said it is doable, but it takes great courage and the blind person would have to know that area very well to go running at full speed. So it's not a stretch to assume she knows that area well enough to play chase with Noah.

• If you want to live in an isolated community, why bother with all this nonsense with the monsters? Why not just buy an island and build your commune there, surrounded by a thousand miles of ocean?
  • Willing Suspension of Disbelief in the name of Rule of Drama
  • Believe it or not, the movie is more believable than the island idea. You would be hard-pressed to find an island that you could scare away all the ships in international waters. Where there's one island, there's more. And any island on Earth in a temperate/tropical zone and large enough to maintain a community on already has a community on it.

• Why does such a tiny ranger station require such a large cache of medical supplies? They certainly didn't need a whole refrigerator full of medicine!
  • Maybe they had a lot of different antivenins, antidotes, and antibiotics for people who might have been hiking in the non-Village part of the reserve, because there are poisonous snakes and berries in the region and they are being kept there specifically so that hikers don't need to go all the way to a city as many as several hours away on the highway in the event of encountering poison, venom, or injury?

---

Back to The Village