Like, okay... I watched the Village last night

[MrScorpio]

And the plot was pretty obvious.

M. Night's gotta have three things in his movies:

A surprise ending (No surprise here)
A supernatural angle (Non existent)
His cameo (He didn't even want a direct shot of his face)

Verdict: He phoned this one in

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

1. Even though I thought the TWO twists were rather obvious, I still liked

this movie very much. Because I think it was a less "twist dependent" movie than, say, the Sixth Sense. Basically a drama, character study.

I liked very much the not so subtle political commentary about how life in the village reflects our current situation here in the U.S. At least that was my read on the movie.

[MrScorpio]

2. Paranoid White people who are rich enough will leave reality if they could

The point of the movie is that no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't.

Hurt repeating that "This is a crime." summarized their ultimate failure to separate themselves from the cause of their original victimhood.

Using his blind daughter was the most cynical way to perpetuate their self delusion

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

4. I was referring more to the specific methods used to control the village.

[LuminousX]

3. The Amish accomplished what Hurt's group did without using terror

You can look at the village as a metaphor for modern day America, leaders using terror alerts to keep the populace in check.