For months before its release M. Night Shyamalan trailers haunted movie theaters, reminding us that the Pennsylvanian director previously brought us Signs, Unbreakable, and the popular thriller that jump-started his career—The Sixth Sense. Such a promotion should have been ample warning that his most recent film, The Village, was destined for disappointment despite the all star ensemble cast that includes William Hurt, Adrien Brody, Joaquin Phoenix, Sigourney Weaver, Michael Pitt, and a host of other remarkable talent. Watching this film on opening weekend in San Francisco reminded me of Gertrude Stein's classic description of Oakland: "There is no there, there." So it is with The Village. Shyamalan extends a decent 30 minute Twilight Zone episode into a two hour endurance test that leaves viewers humming Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is?" as they exit.

Shyamalan's latest "style over substance" production relies on another of his trademark plot twists, but based on such a tissue paper premise that Touchstone Pictures is rushing to recoup as much box office as possible the first couple of weekends before negative word of mouth overwhelms the film. Naturally, in a world devoid of creativity and crammed with banal screenplays, a few may find The Village entertaining. One excitable screaming lady sitting to my left certainly fell for every manipulative pit fall, jump cut, and monster glimpse that Shyamalan shamelessly tossed on the screen.

Despite masterfully creating suspense in all his work, Shyamalan falls far short of duplicating the Master. Hitchcock found ways to get audiences to empathize with his protagonists, develop nuances in character, and deliver a real shock when his MacGuffin runs its course. Shyamalan boxes himself in with his over reliance on delivering his trademark plot twist in a story that could have gone another direction. It's a pity that the director doesn't take full advantage of his cinematic talents to craft a real character study in his somber tale of an isolated community and its myths. Due to the plot's structure, Shyamalan fails to let the audience inside the characters lest he give away the "secret," making it difficult to empathize with any of the stock characters. That only causes The Village to land with a thud after revealing the obvious.

Only Phoenix gets a credible acting moment with a priceless blank stare when abruptly confronted with a young woman's profession of profound love, and the editor hits a great note with the follow-up shot. But these moments are rare. Most of the cast mails in their stylistic paint-by-numbers performances—William Hurt pontificates and has one angry man session while Sigourney Weaver looks on with Victorian restraint and Adrien Brody follows up his Oscar winning performance with an unconvincing stint as the village idiot. The ensemble cast all hit their marks competently, but the main problem lies with the shallow screenplay that weakly mimics Dogville, using minimalist sets and costumes rather than Lars von Trier's experimental chalk outlines and Our Town style staging.

Opening with a child's funeral, villagers from an undetermined time period share communal life in the midst of a Pennsylvania woods. The archaic language, clothing, and technology suggest that this is either set at the turn of the 21st century or consists of a group of Amish outcasts. Outside mentally challenged Noah Percy (Brody), everyone is deadly serious and continually on guard against the hostile creatures that inhabit the woods, which also means avoiding red wildflowers and red clothing. The enemy creatures dress in red and have big wooden claws, but have never been known to enter the village as long as the community honors the rule of never venturing past its borders.

Internal relationships become important in such an insulated community that survives through some means. We assume they must be subsistence farmers, yet no one seems to do all that much work. The elders keep having meetings while the younger citizens jockey for establishing eventual marriage partners. Patriarch Edward Walker's (Hurt) blind daughter Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard) senses auras and has become attracted to the most earnest young man of the village, Lucius Hunt (Phoenix). After a few incidents to introduce the mysterious beasts of the forest, something bad happens to one of the villagers and Ivy volunteers to fetch help from the outlying towns. This requires that she go through the forbidden zone, but Walker determines that her innocence and blindness actually makes her the only person capable of successfully completing the mission.

To reveal much more than these vague notions of the plot would spoil it for those still determined to see Shyamalan's latest work. He pins so much of the plot around the transparent mystery that to say much more would steal the pleasure that a few moviegoers could have experienced—at least the ones that get sucked in by the trailers and the director's reputation for suspense drama with a surprise twist. Unfortunately, Shyamalan falls into the same trap by fashioning his screenplay around this trademark.

Hitchcock was criticized for continually creating films in this genre, yet he was able to add nuances and depth that not only glue viewers to their seats, but keeps them coming back for second and third viewings and beyond. Not so with The Village. I'm not wasting a Netflix queue slot on this superficial melodrama.