Something strange is going on in the little village of Midwich.
First, everyone within the village fell into a deep sleep.
After they woke up, all the women discovered they were pregnant.
When the children were born, they were all strikingly similar blonde moppets.
As they children grow, the adults become more suspicious of their offspring...
A couple of years ago I watched the original Village of the Damned. I was a fan of the book and so a little lukewarm on the adaptation.
John Carpenter is one of my favourite directors, so I was interested to see his take on the familiar story.
Simply put, he does not have one. This remake has no reason for being.
First things first, the kids look ridiculous - the hair and the computer-generated eye effects are not effective.
There is no attempt to adapt the movie for colour, the nineties or an American setting.
What was disconcerting was how poorly paced the movie is.
It never feels like scenes are propelling forward, and while Carpenter is a visual filmmaker, there are potentially cinematic moments which are skipped over or conveyed through dialogue.
This feels like an effect of the adaptation - the 1960 film was styled like a docudrama, which allowed for a certain sense of time compression and looser narrative flow.
This movie is shot like a classic Hollywood drama, with continuity editing, so the story feels oddly staggered.
Most of the acting is low key, which works against any sense of mounting tension that the film tries to convey. Reeve is patchy as the lead - he has a few moments where he seems plugged in, and reacting to the children’s deeds, but for the most part he is underselling.
As the mysterious government rep, Dr. Verner, Kirstie Alley is even more low key - she is not bringing any sense of tension or fear. In scenes where she should show… something, like the birthing sequence, or when she tells Dr Chaffee (Christopher Reeve) about the fate of the other children, she is just casual.
I was expecting her to turn out to be some kind of cold fish villain who would betray the townspeople but nothing happens - it is just a poorly judged performance.
The one vaguely interesting turn the film comes up with is the idea that the Children are paired off with some kind of mind-link.
One of the children, David (Thomas Dekker), is alone because his partner died in childbirth. That idea never goes anywhere because the story is locked into the structure of the original.
It would have been more interesting if the film had focused on David and his relationships with his mother (Linda Kozlowski) and Dr Chaffee as he begins to develop more human feelings.
But this movie is not interested in digging into that idea. It is not interested in digging into any aspect of its story’s characters or themes. It is just a plot summary of the old movie, just in colour.
The best thing I can say about it is that it made me want to rewatch the original and read the book, which feels more invested in its characters and the village as a community.
What is worse is that there is nothing particularly specific that feels like Carpenter’s imprint. It just made me want to watch The Fog, They Live and The Thing again, which deal with similar ideas in more interesting ways.
Like the Children, this movie is a lifeless facsimile.
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