Village of the Damned (1995)

Damned Disappointment

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 and hope another film-maker
takes a shot at it.
October 14, 2008

Should have been deepr in emotions

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 other antagonistic group. But the story has no way out, no smallest ounce of hope. The doctor whose wife produced one of the children who should have been ten and are nine because of a still born will eventually use dynamite to destroy them. Even if you want to go beyond the divide you will unavoidably be led to the conclusion this divide is an absolute barrier. You will be transformed into a monster yourself. There is no escape and it is not the fact that the David who lost his mate who was the still born is escaping with his mother that promises a better future that will bring us hope. Alone he might be nothing, his feelings for his lost and unknown mate might be movingly pathetic but he cannot go against his genetic nature and his genetic nature is to look for a mate, for a partner in survival. Yet I found Carpenter's characters slightly too superficial, not deep enough, too cold in one word, though Carpenter is simple and that is an asset in the genre, no baroque or even rococo over-killing. That's lucky because those kids are nothing but a new branch or brand of Nazi SS, and those new branches or brands are becoming by far too many and too common in our modern world though they are always isolated in one little section of the world and have not been able so far to go beyond two or three places at the same time. But they are mobile and that is the real danger because they can eventually build some kind of a network. This time it is becoming really scary.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
July 23, 2008

What movie has been able to bring together a Vulcan, Jedi Knight, and Man of Steel?

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 till their present age.

The children display potent intelligence, telepathic, and mind control abilities--which they use to sadistically eliminate those that they consider to be a threat to them--though the course of the film. In the end, after the children have killed most of the principal characters, Chaffer loads a time bomb into a briefcase and sacrifices himself in order to put an end to the children's evil campaign against humanity.

For Reeve, Carpenter's film as well as the 1995 suspense thriller "Above Suspicion" would be his last before a devastating horseback riding accident that left him paralyzed. September 20, 2007

Good movie

For some reason this movie seems to always get bad reviews from critics and viewers. I'm not exactly sure why, but I think that people expect something different from John Carpenter and this wasn't it. They compare it to his other movies rather than looking at it on it's own.

I think that the movie was great, very well done in the way that it was shot and the way that the actors portrayed each character. It's interesting to see the different twist that John Carpenter put on the original novel by John Wyndam, "The Midwich Cuckoos." The tone of the movie is very eerie, with everything shot in a sort of gray, monotone atmosphere. The leader of the children is absolutely chilling and gives a great performance. I think that she really makes the movie with how she speaks and acts throughout the film. People just aren't used to seeing some seven year old look as if she could snap you in half with a blink of an eye.. literally.

The visual affects are awesome. Who doesn't like to see crazy glowing eyes? It's just cool looking. I highly recommend this movie to anyone not looking to rip it apart just because it's not 'gory' or 'violent' enough for them. April 25, 2007

Village of the Darned

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 like it was made by a wage slave reluctantly punching a time clock every day. More like Village of the Darned, the most mysterious thing about it is just how Michael Pare managed to get such prominent billing when he doesn't even make it past the title sequence.

December 11, 2006

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