I've always felt that this movie got massive hate for several reasons:
First off, it was marketed as a horror film, and it wasn't, actually. People were expected to be scared out of their wits, and while the film does maintain a creepy tone throughout at least 2/3 of it, it still didn't have that big payoff that everyone was waiting for.
Next, the overall concept and the acting isn't bad, but Shamaylan (IMO) made some bad decisions in terms of storytelling, direction and dialogue. For one thing, in an effort to create an environment where people are seemingly being watched from a distance, he does this thing where the camera is 20 feet away from the characters, and to make matters worse, their backs are to the audience. Woody Allen did something like this in Bullets Over Broadway (because he wan't to make it feel like a stage play) and I hated it there too. I'm not saying you need extreme close-ups in every scene, but I'd like to at least see someone's face when he or she is talking. Also, the movie couldn't decide on a main character. You have one guy who hardly says anything for nearly the first half of the film, and then when he finally gains some self confidence, he gets stabbed and virtually disappears from the story. So the focus then shifts to the blind girl, and while she is interesting and likeable, you still can't help wondering when your original central character is going to re-enter the story, though he really never does. Lastly, a lot of the dialogue just felt long-winded and overdramatic.
Finally, there's the whole plot twist thing. Is it a bad twist? No, it's fairly clever. Was it easy to figure out? Some people will say that it was, but the thing is, by this point, everyone was LOOKING for the twist. Shayamalan had become a gimmick at this point and people were only going to see his films because they new there would be some (potentially) mind-blowing twist. Was the twist in The Sixth Sense really THAT much better than all of his other ones? No, it wasn't. But the reason it worked so well was that people weren't expecting it. They weren't looking for it. I guarantee you that if he made The Sixth Sense NOW, everyone would guess that Bruce is dead no later than halfway through the movie, and the critics would probably pan the film.
All that being said, there are things about The Village that do work... the most obvious is that it introduced many of us to the lovely and talented Bryce Dallas Howard. Bryce is one of those rare actresses that might have gotten into the business because of who her father is, but has enough talent and presence to prove that she really belongs there. She's put together a solid body of work over the past few years (I'm just going to pretend Spidey 3 and Terminator Salvation never happened) and I always try to see a film if she's in it.
