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After helming one of the best remakes of all time with 1982’s The Thing, John Carpenter tackles another atomic-age remake. Village of the Damned is pretty faithful to the original 1960 film‘s storyline, which is based on a 1957 book titled The Midwich Cuckoos. It centers around the population of a small, idyllic American town, all of whom mysteriously pass out one morning. The government and military rush to the town’s aid, but no one can enter without also losing consciousness. A few hours later, the townspeople start to wake up. At first, it appears everyone is fine. But within days the town makes an unsettling realization — all the fertile women are now pregnant.
Once the children are born, they are closely watched and studied, but allowed to live with their ‘host’ families. They turn out to be aliens sent to study human nature. They have telekinetic powers and aren’t afraid to use them. Parents and neighbors begin dying at the hands of the children over simple accidents and misunderstandings. Eventually, the town realizes that these children are too powerful and too dangerous. However sweet they may once have been, they must be destroyed.
Carpenter is an ever-reliable director. The most remarkable thing about this remake is how well it coasts over large swaths of time as the children are conceived, born, and raised to school age. There aren’t many scenes full of dialogue. Instead, we get scenes with just one or two succinct, well-written exchanges — and that’s all we need. Genre fans who like graphic gore and violence may be disappointed that all deaths are off-screen. Carpenter sets each of these moments up so well, though, that you don’t feel you’re missing any dramatic impact at all.
Christopher Reeve (Superman) leads the ensemble cast as one child’s father, a doctor who later volunteers to teach the children in a classroom safely away from the ‘regular’ kids. Kirstie Alley (Cheers) gives an odd performance as a federal epidemiologist who chain smokes and maintains an unconvincing ‘been there, done that’ attitude throughout the events of the film. Linda Kozlowski (Crocodile Dundee) and Mark Hamill (Star Wars) are serviceable as a single mom and the town’s preacher. One of the best performances comes from young Thomas Dekker (Kaboom) as the most sympathetic of the alien tykes. A quiet graveyard scene he has with Christopher Reeve is perhaps the best in the movie.
Like the 1960 film, Village of the Damned is best in its opening act when things are still a mystery. Both films get less interesting as they explain themselves. The last third of the film becomes too predictable. Even at a tight 98 minutes, the story starts to feel long, with too few surprises to keep the audience enthusiastically engaged. It’s still a John Carpenter film, though — and that means you can reasonably expect a high degree of quality to make it worth at least one viewing, even if it’s not one of the director’s more thrilling titles.
With Michael Pare, Meredith Salenger, and Lindsey Haun.