Blu-ray Review: John Carpenter’s VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED

By 1995, it was safe to say that John Carpenter’s best days as a filmmaker were behind him. He had made the last of his many masterpieces one year earlier with 1994’s In the Mouth of Madness and would, in fact, direct only four more theatrical features in his career (as of this writing, at least). It would be difficult to argue for any of the four as being his best work.

Though his filmography boasts a handful of detours, most were movies Carpenter made to demonstrate his ability to do something other than horror—the romantic drama of Starman, the would-be commercial FX comedy Memoirs of an Invisible Man. He’s only ever made two movies that feel like dispassionate for-hire gigs. One is The Ward. The other is Village of the Damned, new to Blu-ray from Scream Factory.

A remake of the 1960 film of the same name, Village of the Damned opens with the citizens of the quiet California town Midwich falling unconscious for several hours. They awake as though nothing is wrong, but within a few months discover that many of the women are pregnant—including one teenage girl who is still a virgin. The babies are born and demonstrate unusual powers and characteristics: they have the same white blonde hair, all dress alike, travel in groups, and have the ability to read minds and make others do their bidding. As the Midwich adults grow more and more frightened of the children, they begin to suffer a series of unfortunate accidents—that is to say that the children force the adults to commit suicide in gruesome, graphic ways. Standing in their way is Dr. Alan Chaffee (Christopher Reeve), whose own daughter is among the evil children and who might be the only one who can put an end to their reign of terror.

On the special features of Scream Factory’s Village of the Damned Blu-ray, Carpenter basically admits that he agreed to direct the film so that Universal would allow him and wife Sandy King to remake The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Unfortunately, his lack of the connection to the material comes through in the finished product. It’s still a very well-made movie because Carpenter is capable of nothing less, but it’s also confused and repetitive and, in the end, just okay. And from the guy who gave us Halloween and The Thing and Escape from New York, we’ve come to expect much more than “just okay.”

Things start well enough, and for its first 30 minutes or so, Village of the Damned seems like it’s going to be the undiscovered gem of Carpenter’s career. He creates an effective sense of slow-burn dread and Carpenter, like Stephen King, has always excelled at creating a believable “small town” atmosphere in his films (here as well as in past works like Halloween and The Fog). Carpenter and screenwriter David Himmelstein tap into something very real: the combined elation and fear one feels leading up to childbirth. The discovery that something is “off” with the babies is handled well and the movie pulls off some surprising misdirection. Village of the Damned’s first third carries a lot of promise.

It’s when the movie jumps ahead several years to when the babies have grown up to be young children that things start to go downhill. Unlike the original film’s focus on the male characters, Carpenter says that his intention in remaking Village was to concern itself more with the point of the view of the females. Most of that goes out the window after one prominent female character makes a very specific choice; the rest of the movie leans on Christopher Reeve’s protagonist. The remake is also unable to really make a choice about its own time period; on the one hand, it tries to update the story with contemporary trappings and (especially) a more modern reliance on graphic violence, including scenes of characters being burned alive or forced to gut themselves with a scalpel. At the same time, the kids are all stylized to look just as they did in the original movie, with white-blonde hair and gray suits. While I’ve no doubt this was a deliberate choice to make them look like some sort of “other,” the disconnect doesn’t quite work. It feels like an element shoehorned into a movie in which it doesn’t belong.

The movie’s final two thirds also become endlessly repetitive, with scene after scene of adults confronting the kids, the kids’ eyes glowing and the adults committing grisly suicide. After the first two or three times, the point is made. The idea that the town is afraid of the children is interesting, but it is basically dropped. The notion that they are unable to fight back against little kids is compelling but never explored. What begins as creepy and inexplicable becomes blatantly stated as text, with answers that are far less unsettling than the questions. Even the resolution is confused and muddled, part happy ending and part open-ended ambiguity. In trying to satisfy everyone, it satisfies no one.

Scream Factory’s Blu-ray offers a 1080p transfer of Village of the Damned in its original 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio. It’s a decent, if unspectacular, transfer with a fair amount of grain and fine detail but also some visible edge enhancement and digital tinkering. Both the lossless 5.1 and 2.0 mixes offered as audio options are good, with the full surround mix earning the advantage for having better atmospherics. New interviews include one with co-star/producer Peter Jason, a regular collaborator of Carpenter, as well as another installment of Sean Clark’s Horror’s Hallowed Grounds series, some archival behind-the-scenes material, a still gallery, and the original trailer. The best supplement is a nearly hour-long retrospective documentary called It Takes a Village, featuring reminiscences from Carpenter, producer Sandy King, visual effects artist Greg Nicotero, and stars Michael Paré, Meredith Salenger, Peter Jason, Karen Kahn, plus several of the actors who played the kids, including Thomas Dekker, who played the child David before going on to star as John Connor on TV’s Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Village of the Damned is not a bad movie, just a disappointing one by John Carpenter standards. There’s good filmmaking on display and some effective sequences, but ultimately the movie just kind of lies there. It’s great to have yet another Carpenter film on Blu-ray—we’re just one or two away from having all of them available on the format—but this isn’t among his better efforts. It’s no surprise to hear that he took the job directing Village of the Damned as a hired gun. It feels like it.

Movie Score: 2.5/5,  Disc Score: 3/5