Many different roads lead towards and converge in "The Village". It's part M. Night Shyamalan bore fest, part high school production of 'The Crucible,' part Hitchcockian clutching the arms of your seat suspense thriller, and part "The Miracle Worker."

"The Village" is mightily pedestrian. I say mightily because at all times, you can tell that this movie aspires to be a whole helluva lot more than it really is.

I don't want to spend too much time on this review so here it goes:

Script: Uneven at best. Corny at times. M. Night writes some of the stiffest dialogue this side of a 'Star Wars' movie.

Cinematography: If there is one aspect of this movie that deserves Oscar recognition, it's Roger Deakins' camera work. This movie is beautifully shot from beginning to end. When the movie heads into the woods the camera work is taken to a whole other level. Kudos to the eye behind the camera.

Acting: I'm not completely sold on Joaquin Phoenix as an actor in these types of roles. He was "okay." William Hurt gave a pretty good performance (as always). Adrien Brody did pretty well too. The real standout here is Bryce Dallas Howard (son of Ron). She gave a really good all around performance. It's really difficult to play "blind" but she did a superb job.

Directing: M. Night is a mixed bag altogether. He really knows how to build tension and create atmosphere, but a lot of the times it's all for naught once you find out what's really going on. Without giving anything away, I'd say that the "twist ending" here is somewhat corny and lame. He turned a really cool idea into a 6th grade school project meets a lost episode of "The Twilite Zone." He's GREAT at suspense scenes, but really quite awful with everything else. Any scene where an actor had to interact with another actor is really dry and quite boring. So yeah, a mixed bag is putting it lightly.

Overall: The movie was pretty much a letdown. There were some really good moments, but not near enough of them to save this movie.