Siskel & Ebert picked on it for starring has been actors but none of these people ever stopped acting. Before this movie came out. This was still a creepy movie.
Even if the original is probably much better.
Surprisingly faithful to Wolf Rilla's film, John Carpenter's gaze develops some aspects related to religion, but also has some irony in the representation of this typically American village suffering from an internal invasion. And although the protagonist is Christopher Reeve, it's closer to a necessarily feminine point of view, but it doesn't have the capacity to increase the uneasiness that the 1960 film produced.
Another masterpiece by Jon Carpenter
Could be a Stephen King story ;)
Even though Village of the Damned isn't one of Carpenter's best, it retains some of the Carpenter charm, but in the end it ends up with a distinct "made for TV" feel. It builds pretty well until the kids “grow up”, then it all gets a bit uninspired and predictable. I like it enough to recommend it to fans of Carpenter, but everyone else can safely skip it.
STILL A FANTASTIC MOVIE TODAY, IT'S TIMELESS. TOTALLY ENTERTAINING NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES
I WATCH IT.
ALL STAR CAST ASWEL.
WOULD NOT BE DONE BETTER TODAY IF THEY DID ANOTHER REMAKE ON IT, THEY'D JUST SPOIL IT.
Review by whitsbrainVIP 5BlockedParent2022-01-15T17:05:45Z— updated 2023-11-05T15:44:11Z
This remake of a 1960's classic is not classic Carpenter. It's a mostly lifeless retelling with no scares, mediocre acting, and surprisingly few interesting Carpenter touches.
I like the opening scene. In a localized area around the city of Midwich, all of the people and animals fall unconscious. It's really effective and while nothing stands out about the way it happens, it's disturbing to see everyone go down in such a fashion. And frankly, that's where the movie gets less interesting for me and it's far too early for that to happen.
Carpenter doesn't seem to do much to try and scare us. This is pretty much played as sci-fi. There are a few grisly deaths. And no, I don't mean the one where a man is hypnotized into jumping his pickup into a propane tank. One of the main characters dies very early in the runtime and one guy falls unconscious, but unfortunately, face first onto a barbeque grill. In another scene a woman is forced into putting her arm into a pot of boiling water. All of these things are pretty unique but not scary.
The evil children in the movie turn out to be a formidable problem for Midwich, but Christopher Reeve flies to the rescue, not as Superman, but as a doctor. He manages to find a way to counter the hypnotic powers of the youth, but not before they have run up the body count and have progressed to becoming a problem for the entire state government.
Then, there are those children. They walk or sit around for the entire movie, not exactly threatening, but they've got a menacing flavor to them. The child actors are really the problem here, along with a completely strange performance by Kirstie Alley. Talk about a square peg in a round hole. She is totally off-putting as Dr. Susan Verner. She arrogant, cocky, and supposedly smart, but she doesn't sell a single one of those attributes. This doesn't feel like a Carpenter movie. Does it look too polished? Is it because the children are so robotic? There are so many opportunities to polish off the little hellions that aren't capitalized on, that it took me out of the movie.