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The Village Review: Arya-starrer sloppy horror-thriller movie needs a better screenplay and better concept

he show tries to have a message via its premise, but the weak characters and language make it come off as preachy and out of place in the story.

New Delhi: As her first foray into OTT series, Arya stars in The Village, a series based on the same-named graphic novel. Touted as the first online series in India based on a graphic book, The Village has now debuted on Amazon Prime Video with all six episodes included.

Director Milind Rau’s The Village captivated viewers with its trailer. It gave the impression that the show was a societal critique of environmental protection and folk beliefs.

Storyline

Arya plays Dr. Gautham Subramanian, who is on a road trip with his family: wife Neha, daughter Maya, and their beloved pet dog. A family is tangled up in traffic because an accident they were trying to avoid on the highway has completely blocked their route. In the Thoothukudi area of Tamil Nadu, a made-up village named Kattiyal is situated on a service road that Neha discovers while searching for a different route on her GPS.

A flat tyre leaves the family trapped in a ghost town, and Gautham is compelled to leave his family behind while he explores the area in search of help. At that point, the land’s horrors begin to unfold, setting the stage for the series’ plot, which weaves together events from the past and present. An additional storyline in the show follows a mercenary gang as they attempt to gather samples from the community.

Review

The plot is just too obvious to predict. How industrial and medical waste impact the lifestyle of a certain demographic is explored redundantly throughout the series. The show gets boring to watch when you add in the hackneyed situations, bad script, and uninspired language.

There was a lot of shoddy set design throughout the show, particularly for the parts featuring mutant animals and plants. It was inadvertently uncomfortable to watch since every scene that used a digital character or visual effects was so poorly placed and done that it seemed like a last-minute rendering.

There wasn’t a single redeeming quality to the characters that would have made this show watchable. The show tries to have a message via its premise, but the weak characters and language make it come off as preachy and out of place in the story.

Arya doesn’t seem like he belongs in the series, and he has a hard time pulling off dramatic moments. The performances of Muthukumar (Karunagam) and Aadukalam Naren (Shakthivel) are the show-stoppers. The portrayal by Arjun Chidambaram, who plays a sly businessman, is passable.

At times, the series’ action scenes and graphic violence were entertaining to watch and gave viewers exciting, unexpected shocks. The story’s terrifying undercurrent was largely due to the shocking jump scares it delivered periodically.

On the other hand, The Village failed miserably in almost every other area it attempted. Putting aside the opening minutes of the pilot, the show began to dredge out every last bit of creativity it had.

‘The Village’ has a storyline that seems stale and obsolete. You won’t feel the need to watch all six episodes in one sitting. Even though it starts well, the tale drags on and on and doesn’t provide anything meaningful in the second half.