Gericah May Rodriguez LLB 2 June 22, 2019

Mr. Miguel P. Bolo, Jr. Eng 20 8:00 am-5:00 pm

“The Village”
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In our English 20 class, we were asked to watch a movie entiled “The Village”. It was a 2004
thriller mystery drama film written, produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan which is about a
village called Covington whose population lives in a fear of creatures inhabiting the woods beyond it.
The movie’s storyline was set in rural Pennsylvania in the 19 th century. Covington appears to
be a small, isolated village whose residents live in fear of nameless creatures in the surrounding
woods. The villagers and the elders have constructed a large barrier of oil lanterns and watch towers
that are constantly manned to keep watch for the monsters, known as “those we don’t speak of”.
Warnings on etiquette and colors to wear were made in order to keep the monsters at bay. The
villagers have a long-standing truce with the monsters, the villagers do not go into their woods, and
the creatures do not enter the village.
Behind the film’s strange exterior is an engaging love story of a blind young woman named Ivy
which demonstrates sacrificial love as she journeys through the dangerous woods just to search for
medicines that could save the life of the man she loves. Her dedication to travel the dangerous woods
for her fiancé, despite her physical abilities, paints a beautiful picture of love and self-sacrifice. As she
ventures on the woods, she had a near-death encounter with what they believed as monsters. The
plot twist however revealed that the “monster” that Ivy encountered was Noah, one of the villagers
who only pretended as a monster. It was later found out that the story of the monsters, or what the
villagers call as “those we don’t speak of”, were only made up by the elders to scare the villagers from
going out to the woods. The elders wanted to keep the villagers confined in Covington and live a
simple life away from the cruel outside world.
The film also brought to light the danger of isolating ourselves from the rest of the world. In
effort to control their own destiny, the elders of the village had decided among themselves to cut off
from the nearby towns. They believed that living as a community cut off from the outside world would
allow them to better protect their chosen way of life. Not known to them, it was this isolation that
prevented them from receiving the help they needed.
Nearing towards the end of the film, I realized that we are so much inclined to creating and re-
creating our own monsters. The truth is, these “monsters” are nothing but a reflection of our own
fears. Oftentimes, the real situation is that we fear our own selves. Fear is not real. It is a product of
the negative thoughts we create. But creating our own fears also means having the power to
overcome them. Instead of allowing ourselves to imagine a worst case scenario and be a victim of our
own fears, we can take control of our own minds and consciously decide to visualize the best case
scenario instead. At the end of the day, we should always remember that we cannot keep running
away from our own fears. At some point in life, we must build up the courage to face them and
overcome them.