Is The Village Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot
Somewhat, 4 out of 10. It's a lot of waiting in the dark for the creatures in the woods.
🐱THE SCARE SIGNAL
SCARE SCORE
4 /10
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
DREAD LEVEL
Low
The dread fades once the credits roll.
DOG
Dog: fine
fine, no dog dies.
Ruling: It is a quiet period piece with a few loud jumps, and it is fine for most teenagers.
The Village runs one hundred and eight minutes. It is set in 19th-century Pennsylvania, in a village where the color red is banned and the woods are off limits. Everyone agrees on the rules and nobody explains them well.
The premise, briefly
A remote 19th-century village lives in fear of nameless creatures in the surrounding woods, until one young man asks the elders for permission to go and fetch medicine from the towns.
How much do you want to know?
🐱
The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
🐱CUT TO THE CHASE
How it ends
The creatures are the elders in costume, and the village sits inside a wildlife reserve in modern times. Ivy gets the medicine without seeing the modern world, and Noah, who was in a costume himself, dies in the woods.
The scene you're dreading
Later in the movie, Ivy walks through the forest alone and a creature stalks her. She tricks it into falling into a deep hole. The creature is Noah in a costume, so the scariest part is a person in a disguise.
The dog
No dog dies in The Village, although animal carcasses do turn up skinned around the village.
It is a slow, quiet movie with a handful of loud jumps, and it is much calmer once you know the creatures are people in costumes.
THE SHORT VERSION IS HIDDEN
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
The color red is against the rules
The movie takes place in a remote village in 19th-century Pennsylvania. The villagers believe the surrounding woods are home to nameless humanoid creatures they call Those We Do Not Speak Of. Watchtowers and tall poles with oil lamps keep guard around the edge, and the color red is banned because it attracts the creatures. After a young villager dies of an illness, Lucius Hunt asks the elders if he can travel to the towns for medicine, and they say no. His widowed mother, Alice, wonders why he wants to go. The elders call the towns wicked, and each of them keeps a locked black box. Lucius sneaks into the woods anyway, comes back and says it was safe, and before long the villagers find animals that have been skinned and left lying around. One night the creatures walk in and splash red paint on the doors.
Kitty, the daughter of the elder Edward Walker, likes Lucius, but Lucius loves her younger sister Ivy, who is visually impaired. Kitty marries someone else, and Ivy and Lucius get engaged. Before the wedding, Noah Percy, a young man with a developmental disability, stabs Lucius out of jealousy, and the elders lock Noah in a small building. Edward then sends Ivy through the forest with two young men to fetch medicine, against the other elders' wishes. Before she goes, he tells her the creatures are the elders in costume, meant to keep the young from leaving. The two boys panic and abandon her. A creature stalks Ivy through the woods, and she tricks it into a deep hole. This is the scene people dread most, and it comes later in the movie. The creature is Noah in a costume he found under the floorboards. At the same time, Edward and Tabitha, his wife, open the box they keep and find photos of the elders when they were younger, standing outside a modern counseling center.
A park ranger meets the most confused guest of the year
Ivy climbs a high wall and meets Kevin, a park ranger at the Walker Wildlife Reserve, who is shocked that she came out of the woods. She gives him a list of medicines, and he collects them without telling his supervisor or mentioning her. The movie then explains how the village came to be. Edward was a history professor who founded it more than twenty years earlier, and he recruited people from a grief counseling clinic who wanted to escape the violence of society. His family fortune pays for the wildlife reserve, which has the village inside it, and he even paid the government to make the area a no-fly zone.
The ending, explained
Ivy brings the medicine back to the village and never sees the modern world on the way. The elders' boxes turn out to hold keepsakes from their earlier lives, and their voices recall the traumas that sent them here. The elders gather around Lucius's bed once they learn that Ivy is back and that a creature has been killed. Edward comforts Noah's grieving parents by telling them that Noah's death lets the elders keep the creatures story going.
The post-credits ruling
There is no post-credits scene. You can leave when the credits start.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: fine, no dog dies.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is The Village scary?
Somewhat. The Village is a 4 out of 10, with jump scares, very little gore and a mood of waiting that fades once the credits roll.
How does The Village end?
Ivy returns with medicine for Lucius and the elders gather around his bed. Noah has died in the woods, and Edward tells his parents that his death helps the elders keep the creature story alive.
Does the dog die in The Village?
No dog dies in The Village. Skinned animal carcasses do turn up around the village.
Is there a post-credits scene in The Village?
No. The Village has no post-credits scene, so you can leave when the credits start.
What are the creatures in The Village?
In The Village, the creatures are the elders dressed up as monsters to keep the younger villagers from leaving. Noah later wears a costume he finds under the floorboards, which is the creature Ivy meets in the woods.
BLURRED FOR YOUR PROTECTION
The whole plot of The Village is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
You don't need to spend one hundred and eight minutes in a village full of locked boxes to find out what is in them. Install Scaredy Cat and it will blur horror before you see it.
