Village of the Damned (1995 film)

Village of the Damned is a 1995 American science fiction horror film directed by John Carpenter, written by David Himmelstein, and starring Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley, Linda Kozlowski, and Michael Paré. It is based on the 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. The 1995 version is set in Northern California, whereas the book and original film are both set in England. The 1995 film was marketed with the tagline, "Beware the Children".

The film received negative reviews from critics and failed at the box office upon release. This was Reeve's last theatrically released film before he was paralyzed in an equestrian accident in May 1995.

Plot

The people and animals of the sleepy coastal town of Midwich in Marin County, California fall asleep at a 10 AM "blackout" and regain consciousness at 4 PM. Following the blackout, ten women of child-bearing age mysteriously fall pregnant, including Melanie Roberts, a virgin girl and Callie Blum, a married woman who has not been sexually active for a year due to her husband Ben being away for work in Tokyo. None of them seek abortions after having dreams, and all the babies are born the same night in a barn – five boys and five girls, though Melanie's daughter is stillborn due to umbilical cord asphyxia. The surviving children are healthy but have pale skin, white-blonde hair, cobalt eyes, and fierce intellect.

However, the children do not appear to possess a conscience or individual personalities. They display eerie psychic powers that can result in violent and deadly consequences whenever they experience pain or provocation. The children soon "pair off" like mates, except for David, whose intended mate was the stillborn girl. As a result, David is the outcast of the group. Although he retains some degree of psychic powers, he also has the ability to show human compassion. He talks to his mother, Jill McGowan, the school principal, and begins to understand his situation. The children's leader is Mara Chaffee, the daughter of the physician, Dr. Alan, and his wife, Barbara. As a baby, Mara used her powers to force Barbara to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff.

The children develop a bad reputation in town after causing several injurious and fatal "accidents" to townsfolk, and eventually move to their classroom at a local barn for survival. Local priest Father George attempts to shoot them, only for Mara to use her powers and force George to shoot himself. Soon, it is learned that there are other colonies of blackout children in foreign countries, but due to their inhuman nature, they were quickly eliminated, in some cases at the cost of destroying the entire town. One of the scientists, Dr. Susan Verner, is forced to show the children the well-preserved alien corpse of David's intended mate she secretly kept for research. The children force her to commit suicide with a scalpel. An angry mob gathers to attempt to kill the children, but their unsuccessful efforts lead Midwich into chaos, and the rest of the scientific team flees.

Alan devises a plan to detonate a bomb inside a briefcase in the children's classroom. By thinking of a brick wall, he is able to create a mental barrier and keep the presence of the bomb a secret from the children. Jill begs him to spare David because he is not like the others. Alan attempts to do this by asking David to leave to get his notebook from his car. The rest of the children begin to suspect that Alan is hiding something. Mara's true face shows through as she breaks through Alan's defenses, revealing the bomb. The other children look at the clock, and the bomb explodes, killing everyone inside, including Alan. Jill holds David outside during the explosion.

While driving, Jill tells David: "We'll go someplace where nobody knows who we are."

Cast

Christopher Reeve as Dr. Alan Chaffee, the town doctor The project wound up at Universal, who approached Carpenter to remake it. He said, "I thought, 'Sure, it's an obvious choice, it's easy, that's a pretty easy movie to make.'" He said, "I also knew exactly where to shoot it. I live up there, Inverness, California, and Point Reyes, where we shot The Fog in 1979. I have a house up there. It's paradise; you can stand anywhere, put the camera down and shoot, and you've got it, it's there. It's a small town, plus it's home; I get to shoot at home for a change. So off we went."

"You don't have to do much to the original, really", he said. "You've got to bring it up to date, humanize it a little and make the characters rich. When the original was made, you couldn't say the word `pregnant' on screen. So the birth scenes and the women weren't dealt with."

Additional graphic violence was added in the remake. The children cause one adult, Dr. Susan Verner (Alley) to kill herself by stabbing herself with a scalpel and another adult, Sarah (Pippa Pearthree), to immolate herself. On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 41 out of 100 based on 14 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. In 1996, the film was nominated at the 16th Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel but lost to The Scarlet Letter.

Lloyd Paseman of The Register-Guard said that while the remake did not attempt to make Village of the Damned "something" that its predecessor was not, the film had "mediocre" dialogue and plot development. He gave it two stars out of four. Paseman also remarked that in this film Reeve made an "earnest" attempt, that Linda Kozlowski did the highest quality acting for the film, that Thomas Dekker was "credible", and that Hamill was "badly miscast".

In a 2011 interview, Carpenter described the film as a "contractual assignment" that he was "really not passionate about".

Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.

In popular culture

The design of the characters in the music video for M83's "Midnight City" is based on the film.

References

External links