THE SECRET VILLAGE (2013)

Studio:       Vertical Entertainment
Director:    Swamy Kandan
Writer:       Swamy Kandan, Jason Whittier
Producer:  Swamy Kandan
Stars:     Jonathan Bennett, Ali Faulkner, Richard Riehle, Stelio Savante, Tobi Gadison, Karin Duseva, Kef Lee

Review Score: 

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Summary:

A journalist and a screenwriter discover that a small Massachusetts village harbors a centuries old deadly secret. 

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Massachusetts Colony, October 1666 – 22 people die from mysterious causes. A slave is accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. The truth about the deaths is covered up by the villagers and unknown to the outside world for centuries.

After being kicked out by his girlfriend, struggling screenwriter Greg rents a room in a house near Salem. He meets journalist Rachel, who rents a room in the same house.

A man named Jason searches an abandoned home for a group of young teens. He captures one of the boys and injects something into the boy’s neck with a syringe.

Another man named Joe stalks Rachel as she interviews a villager named Paul. Paul warns Rachel that the villagers do not take kindly to outsiders, but he has agreed to speak with her anyway. Rachel interviews Paul about the history of ergot poisoning outbreaks in the village. Rachel comes home to a warning posted on her front door. She also dreams of black-robed cult members assembled in a cemetery.

Rachel and Greg get to know one another. Paul gives Rachel an envelope with more materials on the ergot deaths. Rachel phones her editor and continues her research by examining tombstones in the local graveyard.

Greg drives Rachel to a meeting with Paul. While waiting in the car, Greg sees Rachel running frantically from Paul’s house. She tells Greg that she found Paul dead and was confronted by cult members in his house.

A man named Jim clandestinely gives Rachel a packet of more materials. Greg comes to see Rachel at the café where she works while Joe watches. Greg and Rachel share a kiss outside.

Greg goes to Paul’s house and is met by Jason. Greg is also introduced to Joe. It is later revealed that during this encounter, Paul and Joe claim that Rachel suffers from ergot poisoning that is affecting her mind and they need Greg to help her.

In the packet of material given to her by Jim, Rachel finds photos of Jason forcibly injecting people with needles. Jim shows Rachel that Greg is meeting with the men following her. Rachel follows a map to a building where she finds more books on the ergot poisonings in the village. Jason and Joe appear with a group of villagers and chase her back to her house.

Rachel watches Greg steal one of her research books and hand it to Joe, prompting her to lock Greg out of the house. Jim shows Rachel a building where people afflicted by the poisoning are kept. Later, Greg helps Jason and Joe capture Rachel. It is revealed that the ergot poisoning gave her visions of Jim and Paul and that she only imagined their encounters. After she is treated, Rachel and Greg leave the village together.

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Review:

Witchcraft.  Voodoo.  Deadly outbreaks.  Salem, Massachusetts.  The year 1666.  Black-robed cult members of a secretive community gathered in a cemetery.  Any one of these ingredients can pepper the pot for horror or for mystery and “The Secret Village” has them all.  Yet whatever frights and intrigue “The Secret Village” may conjure up are cancelled out by a frustrating film structure that works against the storytelling.

Young journalist Rachel moves to the New England home of infamous witch trials to investigate a secret village known for its history of fatal ergot poisoning outbreaks.  Outsiders are unwelcome in the cultish community, but Rachel makes two contacts willing to help her break the story, even though lives are risked by doing so.  Having just been met by his ex-girlfriend’s boot, struggling screenwriter Greg rents a room in the same house as Rachel and the two strike up a romance.  Rachel and Greg have more to worry about than robed figures lurking in the shadows, however.  A pair of mysterious men armed with syringes is also taking people against their will for purposes unknown.

“The Secret Village” uses a non-linear narrative, but not in a way that makes sense for telling its tale, such as in “Pulp Fiction” or “Memento.”  Scenes in “The Secret Village” jump back and forth through time often by mere minutes, yet the jigsaw assembly of the completed scene does not always hold a compelling revelation.  Instead of playing with the viewer’s expectations or distracting attention while the real illusion is created, like “The Sixth Sense” did, attempts at such tricks in “The Secret Village” come off as though someone mislabeled clips in the editing bay and accidentally put the pieces in a random order.

       Kef Lee of "The Secret Village" and Frank Darabont: Separated at birth? 

In one scene, Greg visits the coffee shop where Rachel works to check on her and he seemingly frightens away one of Rachel’s stalkers.  She and Greg converse, head out to the parking lot, and say their goodbyes.  A few short scenes later, Rachel sips from a cup while gazing out her front room window.  She thinks back on her parking lot encounter with Greg and this time the scene plays with a kiss slipped in between their dialogue.  Still later, Rachel revisits that coffee shop moment again.  This time, the scene is replayed with Rachel confronting her stalker before Greg enters.

What the film means to accomplish by breaking these segments apart and spreading them out of order between other scenes is unknown.  It should be teasing the mind with a-ha moments that change the way something was perceived earlier.  Instead, it fosters confusion that the movie was not assembled properly.

The “twist” ending justifies some, though not all, of the jumbled sequencing.  There is a purpose behind why certain scenes do not play in their entirety the first time.  But the movie employs the technique in instances where it is not called for, which only lessens the impact in the moments where it should be working in the story’s favor.

                                    Ali Faulkner and Monica Keena: Separated at birth? 

Although the ending clears up much of the confusion, the final revelation does not explain the way that several of the characters behaved throughout the movie.  This is the type of film that when looking back on it, one can see how the events that took place do not entirely add up given the truth behind the plot’s setup.

Even re-edited in a chronological format, “The Secret Village” would still be disappointingly dull.  For a story that includes witches, cults, and a covered up conspiracy of mass fatalities, the mystery fails to engage and the tension is non-extant.  Black-robed figures should inspire dread, but these cultists skulk about in a very matter-of-fact manner.  The faces beneath their hoods are clean-shaven and nothing about their movements reads as sinister.  In fact, their origins are never explored and they do next to nothing in the story.  They may as well be benevolent monks wandering in an abbey.

Aside from one blue tinted moment of sleeping briefly in a car, the entirety of “The Secret Village” takes place during daylight.  Without darkness and moonlit shadows, the mood always feels too safe and welcoming.

Ali Faulkner is well suited for her role as Rachel, though the script never challenges her, or anyone else for that matter, to do anything bold or unique.  For all its attempts at an unconventional editing style, “The Secret Village” is a fairly conventional story that ultimately collapses from a disjointed delivery and a disappointing resolution.

Review Score:  35

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