Corrected entry: The main premise is (MAJOR SPOILER) **that the Elders founded the village, and propagate the ruse of the creatures in the woods to keep the other villagers from venturing into the outside world. However, there are many non-elders in the village who are old enough to have lived in the outside world long before the village was founded (circa 70's, based on the Counseling Center photo). These people would remember the world before the village, so the ruse would not work on them. Even if we are to accept that only the half dozen-or-so Elders remember the outside world, they could not have possibly procreated the entire village, which seemingly has a population of over a hundred people.
Corrected entry: When Noah dresses up as a creature, he makes extremely inhuman noises. While the director is trying to make you think the monster could be real, the noises could not have been made by Noah.
Correction: Mr. Walker says to Ivy that the elders "created" the sounds of the creatures, he doesn't say how. Maybe the creature costumes had a modern sound device or something like that.
Corrected entry: There are too many things in the village that the villagers couldn't make themselves. It's true that they could have brought things like oil lamps with them, but it seems odd that they would have also brought a huge stock of fancy clothing (bowler and top hats, decorated shirts and waistcoats) that would require a highly-skilled and very well-equipped craftsman or a factory to make. The ones they brought thirty years ago would have worn out, and they couldn't know how many children they'd have or what sizes they'd be.
Correction: "Fancy" clothes like the ones they were wearing were certainly not made in factories during the era they were copying, so how is it so difficult to believe they didn't have a tailor? They had cows and goats and things for the material.
Factories existed in the 1870s.
Corrected entry: When Lucius is reading his plea from the paper, he starts it from the top and after a couple of sentences he has advanced to the middle of the paper already.
Correction: We don't know what he has written on the paper. It could be that he has just written some clue words to what he wants to say, or, more likely, he has scratched some text out because he was unhappy with it and then proceeded further down the page.
Corrected entry: Lucius Hunt enters the woods and encounters a creature. Nobody sees him doing it. Later on, the creatures visit the village to leave some warning signs. The next day, Lucius confesses before the villagers. If the creatures are inventions of the elders, then how could the elders know that the rule was broken so that they fake the warning visit?
Correction: They knew the rule was broken because one of them was in the creature costume and saw him do it.
Corrected entry: Since the village is secluded from the outside world, it's apparent that they have no medical supplies nor medicine (Ivy going to the town to get medicine reinforces this). So then, for 20 or so years nobody in the village has ever needed surgery, medicine, gotten badly injured, or required any other major medical attention? Seems a little too convenient. And if they did, were they simply left to die in agony? Not exactly the Utopia that the elders set out to create.
Correction: They have very basic forms of medical supplies, bandages, etc. You have to remember that these people are living away from crime and dangerous situations, such as being run over by a car or falling off a building, so the likelihood of serious injury would be extremely low. We are shown at the beginning of the film that they do still have some diseases, but do not treat the patient in those circumstances.
The likelihood of serious injury wasn't low at all during the era they were trying to emulate, so why would it be low in the Village?
Corrected entry: The end of the movie explains that planes are not allowed to fly directly over the reserve, but with Ivy getting to the wall so quickly, it seems the people did not live all that far from the edge of the reserve. Surely at some point the kids would have seen AND heard an airplane flying off in the distance.
Correction: No, they wouldn't. It took Ivy almost 2 DAYS to reach the wall. She rarely stopped for breaks, so she would have walked for miles and miles.
Corrected entry: When the "Creature" falls into the hole, it falls forwards, so it should land on its stomach. But when we see it dying in the hole, it is on its back.
Correction: It's not inconceivable that during Noah's death throes in the pit that he turns over in an attempt to escape. We see that he survives for a short while after falling in.
Corrected entry: Instead of sending a blind girl to "the towns", why on earth doesn't one of the elders go? They know what's going on, they can see, they know what to get and they can function in the modern world.
Correction: The Elders state that they made an oath to never leave the village. The other elders remind him of this oath that he cannot break or it would render everything meaningless. Letting Ivy go isn't breaking this oath.
Corrected entry: It is odd that when Ivy stumbles from the woods onto the highway, that she shows no particular sign of fear, or even curiosity, about the vehicle that approaches her with its sirens wailing. You would think that the sound of the engine roaring, the smell of exhaust, etc. would at the very least startle her, as she has never encountered such a thing before.
Correction: She thought she had reached the city. She had never been to the city, nor to any city. She knew she would encounter things she had never encountered before. It did startle her and she is curious (thus her asking "What was that sound?"), but she expected to be surrounded by unfamiliar sounds and odours by the end of her trip.
Corrected entry: A blind girl walking through the woods on her own? She would have been bouncing off the trees like a ball in a pinball machine. There is no way any blind person can walk through dense woods on their own with so many obstacles at ground, waist and head level, whether carrying a stick or not (as she sometimes didn't). Bearing in mind she had never been in these woods before as it was a no go area makes this a totally ridiculous part of the film.
Correction: This is not necessarily true. Although she would be having a hard time it is not impossible for her to do what she is doing even as a blind person. She also is not shown walking without effort. It is also mentioned that she is not completely blind. Either way I have seen many blind people walk through much rougher terrain than a forest with no problems. As for the whole monster encounter, she memorized the terrain where the hole was and was able to go back to it because of this.
Corrected entry: If the people of the village are not allowed to go into the woods, how do they have wood to burn?
Correction: The woods was a perimeter, they would be able to use wood from trees inside the perimeter. We never saw how big the area was, there could have been many trees inside the perimeter.
Corrected entry: The reader in the town hall when handed the note looks at the note, reads it then asks "Who wrote this?" yet she then proceeds to read the note and announces the author as Lucius. If the name of the writer of the note was in the note "Why did she ask who wrote it?"
Correction: She only glances at the note and doesn't read the entire thing. Lucious' name is towards the end of the note, she may not have seen it from just glancing at it.
Corrected entry: The village is supposed to have been totally separated from the outside world for over 20 years, but it is filled with new-looking manufactured items. Also, the kerosene for the kerosene lamps must come from outside.
Correction: Much like the forceps shown in this movie, these items could have been brought in with the elders when they were developing the village.
Corrected entry: The Elders have no reason to lie about the year, other than to further the plot and make the ending more of a surprise. Lying to the children by saying its 1897 makes no more a difference than saying its 2004, if that is the only life they ever knew.
Correction: The elders were trying to live in a time period where they felt more "hope". They were hiding from the violence of the modern world. The lie was not for just the children, but also for themselves. Remeber that Walker was a historian.
Corrected entry: In The village, when the two girls are sweeping the porch before they see the red flower, the flower is sticking up and going higher than the porch, but you can't see the ground where the flower is. The side of the porch where the flower is, appears to be only inches away from the ground. BUT after the girls bury the flower and return to the porch, you can see that the side of the porch, where the flower was, is actually about a foot off the ground. A crew member or something else must have been holding the flower up just out of the camera shot. Either that or the flower was REALLY long.
Correction: The flower was going out of a crack shown in the wooden porch, not from the ground. The girl picked it from the side of the porch where it was growing.
Corrected entry: After the attack on the village by the "creatures", two of the elders are talking to each other. One says to the other "Some markings were left high on the barn door, coyotes can't reach that high". She made the statement as if she didn't know that the elders were the ones dressed up as the "creatures"(she is one of the elders so she knew). Why would they pretend the creatures were real just to each other when they both know the truth?
Correction: The female elder is referring to the skinned animals, and such. The elders don't know who is responsible for these acts, as Mr. Walker tells his daughter later.
Corrected entry: For a blind girl, Ivy sure does know her way around. She never trips (even in the uncharted woods.), can always find doorknobs and stairs, and always looks people right in the eye.
Correction: Bryce Dallas Howard (as she mentioned in many interviews) purposefully looked people in the eye, because after spending time with some blind people researching the role, she realized that many of them stared people in the eye, like seeing people did.
Corrected entry: In the trailer, a lady says in reference to the red plant being picked how the colour red is not allowed, the close up of her face shows her wearing bright red lipstick.
Correction: That's the natural color of her lips. If you watch the earlier scenes where they are eating outside, you will notice a man and a little later a little boy with lips just as "red". Besides that, it says "the bad color" not "red", so it may be very close to an exact shade of crimson like the drawings on the stone, the door marks, the flowers all are.
Corrected entry: When the elders are yelling at Mr. Walker for telling his daughter it was all a farce, August Nicholson is wearing a modern shirt, something which wouldn't be around if they were trying to fake a 19th century community.
Correction: But they were not trying to fake a 19th century community. They had just established a community and told the children that was the way the world worked. I expect half the clothes they owned were semi-modern.
Correction: Of course there are several others in the village who know of the outside world. The stories of the horrors in the woods are not made for them, but to keep the _children_ from roaming about, and even to stop natural youthful exploration. The villagers wanted a perfect, peaceful society, so they all played along with the stories, but their descendants needed to be free of outside impulses to preserve their innocence, else they would risk that greed, hatred and violence destroyed the community (as it has ours).
Twotall