Village of the Damned (1995) — Triskaidekafiles

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED

WRITER: Screenplay by Dan Himmelstein

DIRECTOR: John Carpenter

STARRING: Christopher Reeve as Alan Chaffee
Kirstie Alley as Dr. Susan Verner
Linda Kozlowski as Jill McGowan
Michael Pare as Frank McGowan
Mark Hamill as Reverend George
Meredith Salenger as Melanie Roberts
Peter Jason as Ben Blum
Constance Forslund as Callie Blum
Pippa Pearthree as Sarah
Karen Kahn as Barbara Chaffee
Thomas Dekker as David
Lindsey Haun as Mara

QUICK CUT: A bunch of parents struggle to deal with their kids all coming of age at the same time.

THE MORGUE

Dr. Chaffee - A kindly country doctor, a smart man, who suffers a tragedy and never fully recovers.

Dr. Verner - A less kindly government doctor, interested in getting whatever she can out of the children of Midwich.

Mara - The ringleader of the Midwich Cuckoos. A supremacist who will do whatever she needs to for her people to survive and thrive.

David - Another of the Cuckoos, the one with heart and feelings, and the counterpoint to Mara’s cold calculations.

The plot of this movie is totally cuckoo.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! After a month of foolishness, I needed a break, something more serious, and since it is the 30th anniversary this week, I decided to take a look at the 1995 John Carpenter remake of Village of the Damned.

I've always been a fan of the Midwich Cuckoos story the films are based on, and both movies are fairly decent retellings of the tale, although in different ways. I do plan to go back to the original movie at some point, but this timing was too good to pass up.

We open up in the very remote town of Midwich, where everyone knows everyone else, and news travels fast. There is an ominous shadow passing over the town before most of the townsfolk are even awake. I guess they're technically villagers, but whatever.

Much of the first chunk of the movie is nothing more than meeting the townsfolk who are going to make up most of the adult cast, as they get ready for a festival.

After about ten minutes, everyone within the village limits suddenly passes out, with no explanation, all at the same time, no matter what they were doing.

They illustrate the point most harshly when Frank is returning home with some helium for balloons at the festival. He passes out behind the wheel, crashing his truck, and going boom, as he enters the area of effect.

Police show up, and when a handful of deputies also pass out, more and more officials start showing up. They mark off the limit of the effect, and try and sort out what happened.

To keep the plot moving along and not staring at a literally sleepy hamlet, they see animals by the side of the road start waking up, and venture back into town.

With everyone awake, the town tries to get back to normal, but that's gonna be tough. They need to catch everyone in town up with their missing six hours, and now there are men in bunny suits and soldiers wandering through the town testing for radiation and gas and what have you.

But, life goes on, things do calm down, they bury their dead, and time passes. The government moves on, but Dr. Verner tells local country Doctor Superman, feel free to reach out if anything happens.

Which is when women in the town start realising their pregnant. All of them that are able. At least, the ones in the town at the time of the blackout. This causes particular strife with one of the couples, because the husband, Ben, was away on business for quite some time, and absolutely cannot be the father.

Alan puts enough together, knows this isn't natural, and figures out that SOMETHING hinky went down on blackout day.

They hold a big town meeting, Doctor Verner returns, and tells the town that anyone who decides to keep their baby will have all their expenses paid, and receive a $3000 monthly check.

Surprising everyone, not a single mother decides to terminate the pregnancy, and the movie alludes to it being from some force. Beyond the promise of 3k a month, even.

I’ve made up my mind, I’m gonna keep my baby.

The plot fast forwards through the pregnancies and so do I, directly to the night of the births. Because yes, they all give birth at the same time, or near enough.

One of the babies doesn't make it though, and Dr. Verner is VERY quick to secret it away out the door. It's done under the more than reasonable guise of "don't want to upset the other mothers" but if you find this a bit suspicious, well good.

We jump through their early development with a few highlights. Verner and Chaffee watch over the kids and their testing, and ponder their origins, especially when all their genetics indicate a common ancestry, "like they're siblings". Verner eventually hits on xenogenesis, alluding to the possibility of aliens.

Some of the toddler highlights show the children have much much advanced intelligence, like David spelling his own name before he can walk, and they also possess mental abilities. Young Mara gets upset at her mother, and forces her to stick her hand into a pot of boiling water. Talk about your terrible twos.

I said I don’t want to watch Teletubbies!

After the incident, Mara's mom is distraught, and is sure her kid made her do it. She heads out to the seaside, and takes a long walk off a short cliff, with the help of a little push from Mara. Superman isn't fast enough to save his wife, and she falls to her death.

But now we jump even further ahead to when the kids are no older than 10 or so, and have become the absolute worst clique of mean girls at the school.

The children check in at the clinic for their regular exams, and Mara finds Verner is hiding her thoughts from them. Probably a good idea, since she sees the children as potential weapons or threats.

During one of the children's eye exams, the doctor puts in the wrong eyedrops, causing the child a lot of pain. Mara barges in, and forces the doctor to put the wrong drops in their own eyes, permanently blinding her. Oh I do not want to see these kids in their adolesence.

The town decides the children can't stay in regular classes, for the safety of other children, and they implore Alan to teach them. There's something I love about the casting ending up having Superman being the one to teach them about humanity.

We spend some time with David and his mom, and see he actually has some emotions, unlike the other Cuckoos. He doesn't understand why he is feeling things over the clinic incident, and he learns about empathy.

The children wander off to the barn where they were born, and will decide that will be where they are taught and eventually, where they shall live.

Time to go, boys and girls, the fun’s just starting.

Meanwhile, David continues to express his individuality and wanders away from the group. He finds the mother of the Cuckoo who died in childbirth, and catches a vision of her impending suicide.

The movie uses this opportunity to drop some old time religion on us, as the Father Hamill speaks to the suicide, and speculate on the nature of the human soul. But it also manages to dovetail that into some exposition that the children are of one soul, one mind, a hive mind, connected.

David is wandering the cemetery, looking for the baby who died, and runs into Superman instead. We learn that the child who died was "meant to be with" David, and it's strongly hinted at that being a large factor in his individuality. The two men bond over their shared sense of loss, at Barbara's grave.

One day while teaching the Cuckoos, Alan is called away, and the janitor sneaks into the classroom. He starts harassing the children, which uh, is not the smartest move, and ends about how one would expect.

This incident is what prompts the children, although it was clear this was an inevitability looking for an excuse, to take their teachings, and living arrangements, out to the barn. Yeah, I'm sure isolating themselves will help their relationships with the villagers.

Everything has been weighing down on Alan more and more, and he goes to Doc Verner for answers. Not that she really has any, only more theories, but she does also reveal this is not the first such incident.

She then takes Alan down to the basement and reveals she still has the corpse of the dead baby, pickled and preserved in storage. And it looks more like your classical representation of an alien, for no particular reason.

Unfortunately, this puts Alan in the predicament that now he has to shield his mind and keep all this knowledge away from the children.

All the children get dropped off at the barn by their parents, and they start their isolation and preparations.

Doc Verner finds Alan and tells him that all the other towns like Midwich have been destroyed, wiped out by their various governments, to protect themselves from the potential growing threat of the children. They don't know for certain this is the plan for Midwich, but she was warned to pack and get out ASAP.

Amidst all this, the children kill someone else, and Alan shows up to scold the Cuckoos and ground his daughter. He wants to know why they hate them, and she says it's not about hate, but just a biological obligation. Either the humans will destroy the children, or the Cuckoos will dominate the humans. Us versus them, there can be no coexistence.

We are the future, father. Not them. They no longer matter.

Maraneto continues to have her philosophical debate with Professor C, and she says they are making arrangements to leave Midwich. They are almost ready to go out into the world, and to create new "colonies".

The child picks up on her father trying to block her abilities with an image of crashing waves, and sends him off to do their bidding.

Father Hamill tries to take out Mara with a rifle all of a sudden, but the other Cuckoos find him first, and make him take his own life, as they do.

I dunno, maybe Mara has a point. At least, from a self preservation standpoint.

The townsfolk have had enough, but even mob justice doesn't do much good against the Midwich Cuckoos. Some of the others confront Doctor Verner, forcing her to show them the alien baby in the basement. They make the doctor perform surgery on herself without the aid of anesthesia, once they see the beefcakey baby.

Alan gathers some explosives, as the movie races towards a conclusion. The police show up to try and take out the children at the barn, but again, we know how this goes by now.

Since there's really no coming back from massacring all the police and military in town, Midwich's days are numbered.

Alan arrives with his satchel full of dynamite, and does his best to save David's life, by trying to send him out to the car and get Alan's notebook.

Superman does his best to block his plans from the little Brainiacs, but they are stronger that the sum of their parts, sure to eventually break down his metaphorical brick wall.

David's mom uses the children being distracted beating Alan's brain with mental hammers, to get her own child out of the barn. It blows up, taking the Cuckoos and Alan in the explosion, leaving David as the sole survivor, driving off into the sunset, unbeknownst to everyone else.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: This looks really good. The images are crisp, high quality, but hey. Studio movie with big money, and made with quality equipment, restored to high definition.

Audio: Some good work here.

Sound Bite: “Wouldn't it be a noisy world if we said everything we thought?

Body Count: A nice high pile of bodies.

1 - Eleven minutes in, and Frank dies in a helium explosion
2 - Dude died on the grill
3 - One of the Cuckoos is stillborn
4 - Mara encourages Barbara to jump off a cliff.
5 - Melanie commits suicide
6 - The Cuckoos make the janitor take a dive off the roof.
7 - Ben drives into a gas tank thanks to the Cuckoos
8 - The Cuckoos make Father Hamill shoot himself
9 - The leader of the mob sets herself on fire at the behest of the Cuckoos
10 - Doctor Verner operates on herself thanks to the Cuckoos
11 - The Cuckoos command one of the cops to shoot another
12 - And then another
13 - Another cop shoots the first in self defends
14 - But he takes out one of the cops before he dies
15 - And another
16 - The Cuckoos make a helicopter crash
17 - And it all gets a bit chaotic from here
18 - The barn explodes, taking out Superman and all the Cuckoos but David.

Best Corpse: The burnt up guy who passed out in town onto his grill for six hours is nicely gruesome.

Blood Type - C: Not a whole lot of blood here, but that charred death, and a few other moments are nicely done. Still, a rather tame movie.

Sex Appeal: None.

Drink Up! Every time you see glowing eyes.

Movie Review: Like any good horror fan, I love John Carpenter, but even I am hard pressed to find this one amongst his best movies. Which is a shame, because the concept is rich with potential, and is a personal favourite of mine. But even bad Carpenter is far from a bad movie. It’s just not great, and lacks in something. The acting from the main adults is decent enough, but they just aren’t given much to work with. Reeve makes the most of it though, and finds some good angles to work with. Mara also does a great job as the lead Cuckoo. She is menacing, even for a child, and she carries the strength of the character’s convictions through the performance. I saw some other comments comparing the two theatrical adaptations, and they said something about how the remake shifts the focus to the events, and less on the people, and the movie loses something when it’s not a character piece. The pace of the movie, skipping over huge chunks of time, and breezing to the next major event, also don’t do the narrative any favours. Still, it’s a decently made movie, it just doesn’t fully gel together. Three out of five boiled hands.

Entertainment Value: Which lands it in the tough position of being a well done enough movie that there’s nothing terribly entertaining to have fun with. The torment the Cuckoos foist upon the townsfolk borders on campy fun, and I would not have minded more of that. Even seeing them interacting with normal kids would have been good. John Carpenter collaborator and frequent Trisk fave, Buck Flower, puts in a memorable performance as the janitor, and the standout actors elevate the movie at least. Three out of five Midwich Cuckoos.

If you want to see a really good adaptation, I recommend the eight part “Midwich Cuckoos” miniseries from a few years ago. The length really gave it the chance to flesh out the story and characters. It has a slow start, but once the kids arrive, the plot kicks off.