Far Out examines Roger Ebert’s strongly negative response to M. Night Shyamalan’s 2004 thriller *The Village*. It matters because Ebert, who had previously admired Shyamalan’s work, regarded the film’s central twist as undermining its atmosphere and story rather than providing a satisfying conclusion.

The film follows an isolated 19th-century-style community frightened by creatures said to live in the surrounding woods. Ebert gave it one star, calling it a “colossal miscalculation” and directing most of his criticism at its revelation, which he considered unoriginal and deeply anticlimactic; the article contrasts this with the effectiveness of Shyamalan’s earlier twists in *The Sixth Sense* and *Unbreakable*.