Village of the Damned

                                                                         

 

     If we coexist, we shall dominate you. That is inevitable. Eventually you will try to

              eliminate us. We are all creatures of the life force. Now it was set us at one another to

                           see who will survive.

 

The American village of Midwich is visited by some unknown life form which leaves ten women of the village pregnant. Nine months later, the babies are born simultaneously (but one is stillborn). At first, they all appear normal, but it doesn't take the "parents" long to realize that the kids are anything but normal. As they grow older, the children are shown to have pale skin and platinum-white hair. When they actively use their mind-control powers, their irises or their entire eyes glow different colours, mostly reddish-orange, but also green, yellow, violet, or pure white.

There are some story differences from the earlier adaptation. In this version, one of the children, David, child of local school principal Jill McGowan, loses his "partner" after she dies at birth. As a consequence, he shows human compassion while still resembling the other children and retaining some degree of psychic powers. This leads to his not fitting in well with the children, especially the leader Mara ("daughter" of a local doctor, Dr. Alan Chaffee; her mother, Barbara, commits suicide by walking off an ocean cliff), who considers him less important due to his expression of emotions. Because of his childhood loss, he understands what the other children do not: pain. He and his mother share a brief conversation of this, with David understanding that if he feels pain, he can understand other's pain also. When the other children experience pain, they simply use their powers to inflict the same pain on the adult responsible.

Soon the other colonies of psychotic children in foreign countries are eliminated because of their danger, the scientific team there quickly flee from the town to escape the chaos. However, the lead scientist, Dr. Susan Verner, is killed by the children after being forced to show them David's "partner", who was the baby that was stillborn. Susan had secretly kept the baby so that she could perform an autopsy on it and study it. A mob of angry townspeople attempt to stop the children, but they use their powers to kill the leader of the mob and the other townspeople quickly flee. The State Police and National Guard are then sent out to kill the children but they are hypnotized by the children into shooting each other.

In order to rid the town of the children, Alan devises a plan: he'll detonate a briefcase of explosives inside the children's classroom. By thinking of a wall he is able to create a mental barrier and keep the presence of the bomb a secret from the children's powers. Jill begs him to save David (because he is not like the others), though, which he wholeheartedly attempts to do by asking him to leave the classroom to get his books, which were in his car. Finally, Jill shows up, but the children stop her. David, angered by this, rushes to her defense and knocks over Mara. The children turn on David, but not before Jill grabs him and rushes from the building. At last, the children break through Alan's defenses, but it is too late: the explosives detonate, destroying the barn and killing everyone, including Alan.

Jill and David survive the massacre; she says that they will both move to a place where nobody knows them. The last scene is of David, riding in his mother's car, looking off into the distance.

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                               Copyright(C) 2007 - 2020. All rights reserved.

 

                                  

Directed by John Carpenter
Produced by Michael Preger
Sandy King
Written by John Wyndham
Starring Christopher Reeve
Kirstie Alley
Thomas Dekker
Mark Hamill
Linda Kozlowski
Michael Paré
Music by John Carpenter
Dave Davies
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date(s) April 28, 1995
Running time 99 min.
Language English
Budget $22,000,000

 

 

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