No, it’s not a remake of M. Night Shyamalan’s polarising 2004 thriller.
From director Michihito Fujii, The Village sends you into a fictional Japanese mountain hamlet known as Kamon, where protagonist Yu Katayama (Ryusei Yokohama) is in a tricky place. He seems unable to leave this village where he’s socially ostracised due to an incident in his family’s past. It also appears he faces an “unavoidable fate” linked to a traditional noh mask, and the trailer hints at discussions of conformity.
Netflix’s trailer doesn’t give much away, but there’s been a bit of discussion around the film(opens in a new tab), particularly around modern representations of closed, provincial communities in Japan.
“I wanted to raise the issue about the very act of relying on a community,” Fujii told Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun(opens in a new tab). “I made the work in the belief that society should be formed by sensibly independent individuals.”
The Village is streaming on Netflix from June 16.(opens in a new tab)
