Village of the Damned (1995)

Village of the Damned (1995)

2/10

Starring

Christopher Reeve

Kirstie Alley

Linda Kozlowski

Mark Hamill

Directed by John Carpenter

What a bad remake, many changes from the original and too much emotional intake to make the movie worth the 98 minutes of intended creepiness which the 1960 version squeezed into 77 minutes.

This was the last movie Christopher Reeve did before the tragic horseback accident rendered him paralyzed from neck down. Christopher performance was not the best of his, but the storyline itself didn’t help matters.

In the 1960 version, the movie starts with the hysterical dropping of humans like flies on the ground, here in this remake the writers and popular horror and thriller director John Carpenter decided to give the characters what he felt was missing in the 1960 classic, a story depth.

Story depths are great and wonderful, but some movies can get by without it and in that area director Wolf Rilla who did the 1960 version bested John Carpenter. The other difference in both movies are the change of the lead, in the 1960 version the lead is the Professor and the Doctor along with the Prof. brother-in-law were the supporting actors.

As a matter of fact, this movie removed all the creepiness of the 1960 version and added emotions, which were not needed in making a horror movie.

Here David was not a complete wierdo like the other children and only 10 women were mysteriously pregnant, instead of every woman within childbearing range like the original.

With all these changes and more, this 1995 version is lacking in the fun and horror which was present in the original.

The plot is similar to the original with a lot of changes, some of which I have stated above. The movie is set in America unlike the original which is set in England, but the town name Midwich remains the same. By 10:00 am one day, the people of Midwich collapsed and awoke some time later to discover that 10 of the women in the town were pregnant.

Only 9 of the women delivered safely, and the children were born with strange hair and a weird gaze. The children paired up except one David whose partner died. David was different from the rest, he was not emotionless like the others.

The children grew rapidly and had psychic ability and they were interconnected, what one knows others know too and the children could read minds.

Soon the whole town was against these children and wanted to kill them, but the children also had an offense ability, the ability to control people.

I wish the remake was more close to the original, then it would have been awesome. The movie also had bad CGI and crappy makeup for the children.