I was damned if I did watch “Village of the Damned” (1995), damned if I didn’t. In the latter case because I wouldn’t have completed John Carpenter’s directorial catalog, in the former case because it’s bad. The director made the best horror remake of all time (“The Thing”) and “Village” makes a case for the worst.
Even the Carpenterian mood can’t save it
At least I can save my dear readers from this particular hell. In an update of the 1960 film – which I haven’t seen, but which can’t be worse – a town full of people falls into dead faints and the women of child-bearing age are magically impregnated. We then follow the families raising Stepford children.
The key to making this watchable would be sheer Carpenterian mood, but he takes this film off for some reason. The big-sky visuals are often good, and the score – which the director composes along with Dave Davies – and spooky wind sound effect are fine but they were buried in the mix of the version I streamed. (I read that the Blu Ray sound mix is good, and most Carpenter films are wonderfully mixed, so probably the streaming file should be blamed.)
“Village of the Damned” (1995)
Director: John Carpenter
Writers: David Himmelstein (screenplay); Stirling Silliphant, Wolf Rilla, Ronald Kinnoch (1960 screenplay); John Wyndham (book)
Stars: Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley, Linda Kozlowski
The adult cast is fine but has nothing to work with. The child cast is bland rather than creepy, their white wigs are ridiculous, and Carpenter doesn’t know how to direct them. He gets passionate dialog from Christopher Reeve against the evil alien kids, with the camera isolated on the adult actor, as maybe the kids’ set time was limited or they were being protected from the harsher scenes.
The movie is so blatantly bad that the actors (also including Mark Hamill as a priest) can’t embarrass themselves; we see them as doing isolated scenes in a professional manner. The film is R-rated but the gore is mostly PG-13, implied or shot quickly or from a distance.
“Village” starts off decent, with a sense of mystery as the people all drop (seemingly) dead. Then a federal black hat (Kirstie Alley and a perpetual cigarette) comes in to investigate, and stays on the case when all the women give birth. But somehow she does nothing substantial and doesn’t even seem all that interested, nor does Reeves’ doctor.
Theme is buried in the mix, too
Every time a character is off screen they seem to be out of the narrative. Spousal and parent-child relationships are ephemeral; they’re hard to keep track of and it doesn’t matter anyway. An almost-funny scene finds the parents picking up their children from school, with loveless expressions like they’re picking up groceries. The unempathetic nature of the kids has worn the adults down.
This is interesting in a vacuum, but the film vacuums away interest. Rather than playing out via character arcs and genuine drama, the theme is unleashed in one scene when Reeve’s doctor lectures a kid on how humans’ capacity for love is a worthy trait. Suffice it to say “Starman” did this concept better.
The kids don’t care, as that’s not part of the makeup of their race. But the adults think maybe one kid with a smoldering brow (Thomas Dekker, later of “The Sarah Connor Chronicles”) has capacity for empathy. His genetically pre-planned, assigned mate died in childbirth and he seems depressed about it. That the adults so easily confuse self-pity for empathy makes them boringly pathetic, and I don’t care what happens to them.
(SPOILERS FOLLOW.) Incidentally, everything with the stillborn baby is absurd. Alley’s agent delivers it, quickly announces it’s stillborn and runs off with it. Clearly, she’s smuggling out a live baby to study it, something that will come into play later. But nope, it truly is stillborn. The payoff is that we see a bad practical creature in a vat later. (END OF SPOILERS.)
“Village of the Damned” is both slow (in that the plot never develops branches) and fast (in that Carpenter uncharacteristically rushes through potential nuances). The best thing that can be said about this film – other than perhaps the score, which I am listening to separately — is eventually it ends.