The Village is regarded by some as the start of M. Night Shyamalan's decline in the moviegoers' public eye by those who were heavily persuaded by the film's marketing but is also seen as one of the filmmaker's greatest works by those who saw the movie without any knowledge or expectations about what it was they were going to see on screen. The Village was marketed as a horror movie, but it is indeed a gothic romance (and a great one at that) with psychological thrills. This film's themes are interesting and the cinematography is gorgeous. Although it does have a mysterious, thrilling, and quite scary set-up, the majority of the story and dialogue are about a love story between the two main characters.
M. Night Shyamalan has said that at the center of all his movies is a dramatic story—usually about love, family, or personal beliefs. Night believes the world is a benevolent place (kind and friendly), and wants that message to come through in all his films. He is frequently quoted saying how 'genres' are just the clothes his movies wear, but the films are always about his core beliefs told in a dramatic way. The filmmaker says that the combination of thriller and drama always satisfies him when making a movie. If Night's goal was to make a thrilling drama, he certainly succeeded with The Village. But many do not share this belief, and actually think the film is one of the worst (if not the worst) he's ever made.
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But had the film been marketed correctly, would it have been received better? Viewers have to pick and choose what they watch carefully as to not waste time or money. The Village was released in 2004—before the last wage increase. If viewers sat down to watch a movie that had been advertised to be the scariest horror movie ever, they would certainly have been disappointed to not get what they paid for enough to cloud their judgment of a film as a presented piece of art. Expectations appear to be the culprits here—not bad writing or directing.
Creators used to think that audiences could only be counted on to show up to horror movies if the film followed certain rules and guidelines. But as filmmakers like Ari Aster, Robert Eggers, Jennifer Kent, and many others are showing people, audiences have come a long way in the age of social media where they can openly discuss their opinions and theories about movies with millions of other people very quickly. Viewers nowadays are more than capable of appreciating complex stories of horrors of the mind rather than having to have a scary man with a weapon (a primitive fear concept of slasher horrors of the past).
If The Village had come out today in 2021 and had the proper marketing—possibly with the help of production and distribution company, A24—it would be just as highly regarded as other modern horror movies that are being made today that act more like dramas. Night himself might have been guilty of the poor marketing that led to the downfall of The Village, as he allowed the production of a mockumentary in order to promote the film that was supposed to create a spooky, mystery conspiracy surrounding the filmmaker and his success. The project was a complete secret no one could talk about, and Night wanted the 'documentary' to be thought of as real, even though it was scripted and planned.
It's called The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan and was directed by Nathaniel Kahn and written by Melissa Foster with a runtime of a little over two hours. Although its initial purpose was to promote The Village, it was also meant to promote the director himself and present him as a master of traditional horror. Shyamalan just had his success with the films Signs and The Sixth Sense (both thought of as terrifying and scary films) and with the documentary, people may have expected to see nothing but true scare-their-pants-off horror from Night.
A similar situation occurred with author of horror novels The Shining, It, and more. Stephen King is known for his frightening stories, and that's what fans have come to expect when they pick up one of his books. When King released his fantasy novel The Eyes of the Dragon, he received so much backlash that he turned his frustrations of having to cater to people's expectations into another work titled Misery, where an author is forced to write something he doesn't want to. It's probably true that the marketing had something to do with the failure of The Village, but expectations are to blame as well.
Perhaps the poor marketing of both his movies and himself as a filmmaker have led M. Night Shyamalan to do away with studio interferences altogether so that he can make the movies he wants and advertise them properly. Night has fully self-funded his last four movies including The Visit, Split, Glass, and Old. Maybe this has something to do with studios' inability to properly market the director or his films.