Harefooted Halloween: The Village of the Damned (1995)

What I Liked: It’s competently made and tries its best to move the story along.

Christopher Reeve (The Aviator) really grew on me as the movie went.  At first he seemed wooden and bland with his dull medical practice and his dull wife and all that.  But as he gets deeper into the evilness of what’s going on around him he becomes more compelling and pretty pissed off.  I like it. 

What I Didn’t Like: Kirstie Alley (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) wasn’t very good but at the same time it’s not a great character.  I think the government agent keeping tabs on what’s happening with the mystery children and town is fine to have in the movie but it’s just that she didn’t need to be so inhuman.  Maybe they’re saying the ol’ it takes an unfeeling creature to catch/understand an unfeeling creature?  I dunno.  If this character is gonna be this devoid of emotion she should be more badass.  But instead she doesn’t do a whole helluva lot.    

Ugh, I don’t know guys.  It’s just kinda boring.

Overall Impression: This is a little better than I remembered from many years ago but not much.  You all know I’m a huge Carperterant and I get a kick out of anything the man does but this one is down there in his repertoire.

The setup isn’t bad with this town full of women being impregnated by an unseen alien force.  And even the part where the babies are first born and no one’s on to the kids being totally evil is fine.  But once the demon children grow and the town simply accepts their fate to be subservient to these malicious kids it becomes uninteresting and predictable.

My guess is after tackling the meta craziness of In the Mouth of Madness Carpenter wanted to mellow out with a much simpler project.  He must be a fan of the original 1960 film as well as the book it was based on, called “The Midwich Cuckoos”, because this is one of only two remakes he did (The Thing (1982) is the other).

Interestingly this was a slight anomaly, a weak blip in the middle of a damn fine run from In theMouth of Madness through Vampires.  It’s completely non-essential but if you’re starting to run out of Carpenter material this isn’t the worst picture he’s made.