Village of the Damned

You'd think an interesting plot and John Carpenter would result in a great film experience. Think again. The acting was bad and there was no atmosphere, tension or scares. There were a couple of moments when I thought the film was primarily created as propaganda for birth/population control and as a not-too-subtle attack on Christianity. I still like the plot. This is a remake, so perhaps the original is superior, which is often the case.

A classic of science fiction by John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos. John Carpenter makes it into a film that is disquieting. The end of the world will never come of course but it is all already programmed within our own genetic heritage. Evil is in our genes in the possibility that is being developed and progressively monitored by the social system that our human nature is producing to see the end of emotions, of empathy and compassion, the end of any kind of emotion. It is all the more disquieting because this social system of ours is producing absolute individualism and yet it is this very absolute individualism, when becoming the common point of a certain group of people that will lead them to absolute and cold is not glacial power and destructivity in the sole name of survival. That sounds and is horrible but absolutely possible. There is no difference between these mutants and the posse that is going to lynch them. They only want to survive even if that means the destruction of the... Read more

Question: What movie has been able to bring together a Vulcan, Jedi Knight, and Man of Steel? Answer: John Carpenter's remake of the Village of the Damned. Director John Carpenter's remake as well as the similarly titled 1960 film was based on John Wyndham's novel "The Midwich Cuckoos." Carpenter's science fiction/horror flick also brought together the talents of Mark Hamill (Star Wars: A New Hope; Empire Strikes Back; Return of the Jedi); Kirstie Alley (Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan; Cheers); and Christopher Reeve (Superman, Superman II, Superman III, and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace) among others. Village of the Damned (1995) focuses on the mysterious birth of ten children (with one being stillborn) in the isolated town of Midwich. Dr. Alan Chaffee (Reeve) and Reverend George (Hamill) are among the parents of these seeming genetically linked children while Dr. Susan Verner (Alley) is a government sanctioned doctor whom observers the nine children from conception t... Read more

Although the most prolific of the 70s directors who worked their way up from superior exploitation to the mainstream, John Carpenter's flame may have burned the brightest but it also burned the most briefly before he descended into lifeless hackwork. Even the more promising projects floundered when confronted with his increasingly pedestrian handling. His 1995 remake of Village of the Damned is a classic example. Ill-advisedly relocated to a California coastal town inhabited by Superman, Luke Skywalker and Crocodile Dundee's girlfriend, the special effects are more prominent and the body count is multiplied more than ten times as villagers burn themselves to death, impale themselves, doctors blind or perform autopsies on themselves, all staged with remarkable flatness and a complete lack of atmosphere or foreboding. A few good ideas are thrown in, but aside from one schoolroom sequence and the foolproof "brick wall" ending, it's desperately dull and under characterised stuff that feels... Read more