“The eyes are the windows to the soul.”

Heather’s rating: Well that was a wet fart of a movie.

Heather’s review: When I was in high school, one of my favorite things to do was to walk through the video store’s horror aisle to see which movie had the creepiest box art. Amongst all the blood and fangs and machetes was a cover that always piqued my curiosity: A group of pale children with pale hair and glowing eyes staring into your soul. I never picked Village of the Damned up, but it was a striking image that stuck with me.

Almost thirty years later I finally sat down to watch this, totally blind, except for the aforementioned image and the knowledge that it was directed and scored by John Carpenter. Afterward the movie I said to my husband “Well that was a wet fart of a movie.”

A small town in Northern California experiences a several-hours long phenomenon where everyone within a certain perimeter falls unconscious. Soon after, all of the town’s women of childbearing age are pregnant (including one virgin). Seven children are born, and one female child is stillborn. As they grow, they exhibit strange behaviors, lack of empathy, mind control and, eventually, murder.

Also an obsession with wearing only several shades of grey.

Village of the Damned has so many things going on while steel feeling empty. We have Kirstie Alley as a government agent studying the children, an alien invasion plot, discourse about what it means to be human, a sniper-toting priest played by Mark Hamill, and Christopher Reeve doing his best to save the film (and mankind). Despite all of that, there isn’t anything particularly memorable about this film except for the children with their dollar store white wigs and glowing eyes.

I didn’t realize until researching afterward that it is a remake of an adaptation from the 60’s. John Wyndham (author of The Day of The Triffids) wrote the original story of this in the ‘50s titled “The Midwich Cuckoos.” Then in the ’60s came the black-and-white adaptation, which showcases what a missed opportunity this movie was.

This is an instance where a remake could’ve been beneficial. The ’60s version made changes to the story such as adding the mind control powers and, due to budgetary reasons, cutting the number of alien children from 60 to 12. There was a taboo against talking about impregnation, virgin birth, or the thought of aborting of these aliens as an option, so the movie makes up an odd excuse for how this happened.

A remake 35 years later could tackle topics previously not allowed on the screen and increase the number of children in order to make the threat seem more viable. Instead, while Village of the Damned will say out loud what has happened to the women, no important changes of any kind are made here.

It’s a pointless remake that even Carpenter himself described in a 2011 interview as a “contractual obligation.” The acting is lackluster except from Reeve, Carpenter’s score is all over the place and uninteresting, and the movie fails to be creepy or even engaging.

Intermission!

• Famed makeup FX artist Greg Nicotero worked on this film
• The design of the characters in the music video for M83’s “Midnight City” is based on the film.
• This was Reeves’ final feature film completed before the horse-0riding accident a few months later that left him paralyzed.
• These aliens are doing just the worst job of fitting in.