FAQ for
The Village (2004) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDbs Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for The Village can be found here.

Noah did it. He was seen running away in a monster suit at the wedding "skinning" (The Elders didn't know he had stolen a suit until later). His mom says, "Oh-the animals!!!" when she finds out he stole the suit. For extra info...in the original script, and in scenes subsequently replaced, the creature costume is more of a hump-backed affair (explaining all the "feathers" around the hole in the floor; they are used for stuffing the hump) and it is described as "larger and hairier" than the Elders' costume. The scene where his parents find him missing does not have the "Oh, the animals" and the "oh, he stole a suit" lines in it; instead, it shows the chicken feathers used for stuffing and bits of fur that have been knitted together, implying that he made his own suit in the "quiet room" during all his time spent in there.

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"Andrew (Wyeth) was the main inspiration for the look of the movie," explains Shyamalan. "In fact, for a long time I was talking to Disney about whether we could get the rights to one of his pictures for the poster." "The grays, and the minimalism, and the light - that's all from Andrew," he reports. "And there's not a lot on the walls... . He painted a lot of scenes from one doorway [looking] into another doorway, an old-fashioned bed and all. Creepy. Creepy beautiful." ("A setting right out of Andrew Wyeth" By Steven Rea Philadelphia Inquirer Movie Critic)

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Shyamalan wanted the landscape and visuals of the film to be stark: "I do prefer one chair on a porch rather than all kinds of things on the porch, so to speak. That alone helps create a certain sense of isolation."

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The short math......10 houses = at least 20 original founders (19 adults and baby Lucius) The "clinic photo" shows them wearing 1970s clothes and has a 1973 vintage car in it.... so the founding date of the village may be 1973 or 1974 (they had a pretty narrow window to get the joint built before baby Lucius would start remembering TV, cars, planes, Richard Nixon and such). That would make Lucius the oldest child at 30. Many other children born after the village's founding would be near 30 at the time of the film's events, and probably have been having kids of their own for 10 years or more (remember... no modern drugs means no "pill"). So you are seeing Elders, Elders' latest kids (Edward Walker and wife are still having kids), Elder's oldest kids (the ones that look 30-ish), and the older offspring's own children.

That is the director and writer, M. Night Shyamalan. He makes a cameo appearance in all of his movies.

A lot of people have commented on the similarities. Basically, the plot (of Haddix's Running Out of Time) is that a man starts an old-fashioned colony and all the adults know that it's really 1997, but they aren't allowed to tell the kids. A few of them get sick and a girl's mother sends her out to sneak into the real world for the needed meds. Margaret Peterson Haddix actually did seek the advice of an attorney and considered pursuing the case, but never did. Copyright infrigement was very hard to prove, and even if she were to have gone to trial, it would have been her and Simon & Schuster (her publishing company) going up against M. Night Shyamalan and Disney; as such, the odds of winning weren't that great.

Yes, the script for this movie was stolen over a year before it was released, so the film was widely pre-reviewed on several Internet film sites including AICN.com. A copy can be obtained here.

Yes, they did re-film the ending, but if you read the original script, you will see it has the same twist as the final film. So no, changes were not made because the twist was leaked. It looks on the face of it like the ending change was a response to bad test screening results.

The Village was filmed in two open fields 3 miles south of Chadds Ford, PA (a place called Cossart, PA). An entire town was built in one field. Half of those buildings had complete interiors. The other field contained trailers, equipment, and a large temporary warehouse that contained duplicate interior sets for some of the buildings. All of the structures were torn down one month before the movie was released and the land was restored to open countryside. There is additional information about the actual sets and the filming at this fan site. The movie also had other filming locations: Centerville, Delaware, USA - Fall 2003 filming location of"Ivy bumps into a fence".... Pedricktown, New Jersey, USA - Fall 2003 filming location of "Ivy almost gets run over by a truck" stunt scene and "truck driver stops at a gas station to get the lowdown on the village" scene. Spring 2004 filming location of "Ivy meets some rangers" scene..... Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA - Location where still shots were taken of the "clinic members."

Elders took an oath never to go back to the real world (dialogue from the film):

Tabitha: "You have made an oath, Edward, as all have, never to go back. You cannot break the oath. It is sacred."

Mrs. Clack: "We have agreed NEVER to go back, NEVER."

In the movie, Ivy asked to go, and her father (Edward Walker, an Elder) okayed it against the wishes of the other Elders. In the script, it was Edward who asked Ivy to go. As to why Edward okayed Ivy's trip into the Towns for medicine, a number of possible explanations are given in his dialogue.

Because Ivy was blind, she would not be able to see the discrepancies between the lifestyles of the Village and the Towns. [Edward to the Elders: "I sent her because I trust her. And it is in her blindness that our town's hope lives."]

Because Edward was in love with Alice Hunt but was already married to Tabitha, sending Ivy for medicines for Lucius was Edward's gift of love to Alice. [Edward to Alice: "It is all that I can give you..."; Edward to the Elders: "I made a decision of the heart. I cannot look into Alice's eyes and see the same look I see in August's. It is too painful."]

Because Ivy had NOT pledged never to go into the Towns and because it was her fiancé who was injured, it was her call to make. [Edward to Ivy: "You gave your heart to this boy. Are you ready to take this burden, which, by right, is yours and yours alone?"]

Because the Village had been created on the Elders' hopes of providing a better life, it was wrong to deny that hope to Ivy. [Edward to the Elders: "What was the purpose of our leaving? Let us not forget it was out of hope for something good and right. I hope I am always able to risk everything for the right and just cause. If we did not make this decision, we could never again call ourselves innocent. And that in the end is what we have protected here: innocence."]

It had previously been suggested that the creatures in the woods would not attack a helpless person. If Edward or anyone else made the trip, it would have sent the message that anyone could safely enter the woods, and the secret of the Village would likely have been forfeit shortly thereafter.

Apparently, Noah didn't have a color or Ivy couldn't see it. After the scene where Ivy and Noah are playing hide-and-seek, Ivy goes into the house and opens the closet door to hang up her coat. We can see Noah hiding in the closet, but Ivy doesn't seem to notice him. Ivy says that only a handful of people give off a color. Of the handful of people, only her Father and Lucius are specifically said to have a color.

No. In the three scenes where she talks about his color, she doesn't name it. (1) Ivy to Lucius while at Resting Rock: "Some people, just a handful, mind you, give off the tiniest color. It's faint, like a haze. It's the only thing I ever see in the darkness. Papa has it, too. Do you wonder what your color is? Well, that I won't tell you. It's not ladylike to speak of such things. You shouldn't even have asked." (2) Ivy to Lucius while on the front porch: "I saw you at the window. No, I won't tell you your color. Stop asking." (3) Ivy to Edward after Lucius has been stabbed: "I cannot see his color."

It should also be noted that the working title of the film was "Grey," perhaps implying that Lucius's color was indeed grey. If this was so, it would mean that he was able to act as a sort of 'go-between' between the two worlds---that of blind, faithful simplicity (yellow) and that of horrifying, brutal truth (red).

The actual cause of death was not divulged in the movie, but the script mentions the "violently-shaped rocks that the creature is laying on...its head lay half on and half off." From that, and from movie scenes of Noah's death, e.g., here and here, we can make some educated guesses. The bruises on his face and blood in the corner of his mouth suggest a head injury. His inability to move suggests a broken neck or back. The script also mentions his inability to cry out ["Noah Percy is bloodied and crying. A surge of pain makes his face a tight knot of strain. He gasps as his boyish eyes dart around in panic. He wants to scream. He can't"], and the movie shows blood gurgling out of his mouth when he tries, a symptom consistent with chest injuries, such as a broken rib and/or a puncture to his lung, resulting in him drowning from the blood pouring into his lungs and preventing him from getting air. Hypoxia (lack of oxygen) to the heart and brain can result in death in six minutes or less, which would explain why he died so quickly.

From Wikipedia: Explanation of the storyline. It is revealed that the village was actually founded some time in the 1970s when Edward Walker, professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania approached other people he met at a grief counseling clinic after his father had been murdered in a violent crime (they were there because they also lost a loved one to violent crime). He asked them if they wished to join him in "an idea" he had. From this apparently grew "the village," a secluded town in the middle of a wildlife preserve (the "Walker" Wildlife Preserve) purchased with Edward Walker's dead father's fortune, a place where they would be protected from any aspect of the outside world... even airplanes.

Neither the movie nor the script provides a definitive answer to that question. The best that can be assumed is that he was still alive when Ivy returned from the towns with medicine. Consider that Ivy has no trouble recognizing Lucius by his color when she approaches him on Resting Rock, as well as the night she sees him sitting on her front porch. However, when Lucius has been stabbed and is near death, she has trouble finding him when he is right at her feet, and she is distressed that he has no color. When she returns from the towns and joins the Elders who are caring for Lucius, she walks to him, takes his hand, and says "I'm back." If he was not alive at this point, her reaction would most likely have been one of distress, if she could even recognize his body at all.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) at first gave The Village an R rating due to the sound effect of the knife going in and out of Lucius when he was stabbed. Although the scene itself was not changed when the sound was removed, the MPAA changed the rating to PG-13.