31 Days of Horror- Day 14: Village of the Damned (1995)

(dir. John Carpenter)

Universal Pictures

*First time viewing

After an incident leaves the residents of a small town briefly unconscious, its women wake to find themselves mysteriously pregnant. Years later, the strange, emotionless children born from this incident control the town through fear.

Based on John Wyndham’s 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos, and a remake of the popular 1960 film of the same name, the biggest selling point of John Carpenter’s Village of the Damned is that it’s John Carpenter’s. Despite the film’s negative reception upon release, and its seeming lack of necessity (particularly given Carpenter’s history with creating unique stories), Village of the Damned remains a compelling example of the director’s late work. Carpenter recreates the small, coastal town feel of his earlier work The Fog, and populates it with stock characters that are largely forgettable outside of Christopher Reeve, Kristie Alley, and a criminally underused Mark Hamill. Despite the fact that we never connect with any of the characters outside of Reeve’s widowed, and altruistic father of one of the mysterious children, Carpenter’s sunny, sea-side neo gothic remains engaging. Its engagement is largely on the basis that the glowing-eyed, towheaded children are creepy as hell, but as with most of Carpenter’s work, there’s something deeper at play.

Like so much of Carpenter’s work, there is a social allegory at the center of it. As we watch the parents of this small town struggle to control their nearly identical children, children who lack empathy and therefore humanity, it’s hard not to be reminded of the generational struggles that have defined, and still do define, America. Village of the Damned is inherently about our collective fears of the next generation, the answer to the question of what happens when the children we raise refuse to buy into our morals, and refuse to learn from their parents. It’s the strangeness of failed legacy carried out in a small town from which there is no escape from that fact. The fate of our world is, as it always was, determined by our children, and as their views depart from ours, we have no choice but to live stranded in a place that exhibits all the familiar locations but feels unquestionably alien.

Scare Factor: 1/5 While Village of the Damned doesn’t feel as complete as some of Carpenter's prior films, I’d argue that it is still a necessary part of his filmography.  Come for the creepy, red-eyed kids, but stay for Carpenter’s expression of parental terror.