I don't remember much about the village except I remember turning to a friend in the cinema and correctly guessing the plot twist about 5-10 mins in to the film.
That's imo why he failed so hard after two films.
It was just so amazingly predictable, it took most people the whole film to work out The SIXTH sense as it was new.
Then since he was a 1 trick pony, every film you went into was like working out what was the twist and it was fairly obvious in each one of them.
So he tried to branch out and failed miserably. The village was dire. It was soo slow and so obvious from the outset.
1. Its oldy times
2. Aren't allowed outside of confines of village.
3. Elders are up to something.
4. Bet the twist is, its current times and they're hiding it from the kids and pretending they're monsters.
Like someone said above it was too easy because of the success of his previous films.
Give him anything outside of this pigeon holing and he can't handle it.