Weekend Movies: ‘Village’ Aims to Scare Audiences
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Four major movies enter a crowded market on Friday led by director M. Night Shyamalan’s mystery “The Village” which looks to be the weekend’s box office champ despite a rash of mostly scary reviews.
“The Village” from The Walt Disney Co. debuts in 3,730 theaters, or 863 more than its next closest rival, Denzel Washington thriller “The Manchurian Candidate” in 2,867 venues, according to box office tracker Exhibitor Relations Inc.
The theater count, plus Shyamalan’s strong following and box office history, give “Village” an edge over Oscar-winner Washington’s obvious ability to draw crowds.
Comedy “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” is in 2,135 theaters and family film “Thunderbirds” is in 2,057 theaters.
After a rough year at box offices, Disney looks for a hit from Shyamalan, who enjoys a strong following among the young men who make up the core audience of movie-goers. Fortunately for Disney, those audiences rarely listen to critics.
“It’s tedious instead of provocative and so unconvincing as to be preposterous,” wrote the Los Angeles Times in one of several negative reviews the film received.
The Seattle Times called it “affecting but uneven,” while filmcritic.com said “generally excellent filmmaking and clever plot twists redeem things on the whole.”
But Shyamalan is, undoubtedly, successful at the box office. “The Sixth Sense” hauled in $294 million at U.S. and Canadian box offices and 2002’s “Signs” racked up $228 million.
“If you had to categorize (“The Village”), you could say it is a suspenseful, period love story,” he told reporters in a recent interview.
In the film, an isolated farming utopia in Pennsylvania has cut itself off from contact with the outside world and made a deal with creatures living in the surrounding woods: you don’t bother us, and we won’t bug you.
But when Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix) tests this rule, the creatures begin an assault on the town. He, his young lover, Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard) and all the townsfolk are in peril.
ELECTION YEAR THRILLER
“Manchurian Candidate,” a remake of a classic 1962 film about brainwashing and political assassination starring Frank Sinatra, is winning good reviews and has left early audiences stunned as they contemplate this year’s elections.
“I expected it to be provoking,” the movie’s producer Tina Sinatra, Frank’s daughter, said in recent interviews. “When you have a political backdrop and you’ve got this particular climate, we knew it would support the film,” she added.
The reviews for “Manchurian” have been solid, with The New York Times saying director Jonathan Demme has “made a political thriller that manages to be at once silly and clever, buoyantly satirical and sneakily disturbing.”
Washington plays a Gulf War veteran who commanded a platoon of soldiers that was lost for three days. In his troop is an aspiring politician who saves the men from being massacred.
Or does he? Fast forward 13 years and the politician, now Congressman Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber), is running for vice president. Washington’s character, Bennett Marco, thinks he has been brainwashed into believing Shaw’s heroics.
He comes to believe the events never really happened. Indeed, he thinks they were concocted to make Shaw a medal winner and eventual U.S. President.
Behind the plot is a private equity fund called Manchurian Global that has investments in the defense industry, and Marco has to expose their scheme before Shaw is put into office.
For a light movie experience, there is road-trip comedy “Harold & Kumar.” For kids, “Thunderbirds” is based on the British TV series about the adventures of the Tracy family, who command a fleet of international, ultrasonic rescue vehicles.
All four new films that opened on Friday are hoping to unseat last week’s No. 1 movie, “The Bourne Supremacy.”
Paramount Pictures is behind “Manchurian Candidate,” while New Line Cinema is releasing “Harold and Kumar” and Universal Pictures backs “Thunderbirds” as well as “Bourne.”
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