Village of the Damned (1995)

Village of the Damned is a 1995 American science fiction-horror film directed by John Carpenter and a remake of the 1960 film of the same name.

Plot
All of the people and animals within the quiet coastal town of Midwich in California's Marin County fall unconscious for six hours. Following this "blackout", ten females are mysteriously pregnant. Five boys and girls are born out of them, but one of the girls is stillborn.

The boys and girls pair together like mates, except David, whose female partner died. All of them show psychic abilities, which they show ruthlessly, when they feel attacked or threatened. David, however, developes, in the abscence of his partner, an empathic bond with his mother.

The children's leader is Mara, the daughter of a local physician, Dr. Alan Chaffee, who harmed and killed her mother. Eventually the children, who are by now known to have a collective mind, move to the local barn as their classroom and for survival and Dr. Alan Chaffee decides to teach them after having a positive encounter with David, when he visited his dead wife.

Soon he discovers, how dangerous and ruthless they are since they have no empathy with the exception of David, but also discovers the ability to build a mental wall to protect his thoughts from them. In the meantime the children ruthlessly continue to commit killings for various reasons. Finally, when the government decides to to stop the children, they fail. Allan Chaffee, however, based on his observations, devises the plan to kill them all with a time bomb using the wall trick for that. In the following struggle, David breaks with the children when they try to kill his mother, who is also there, and Alan yells at David and his mother to leave the building.

The children are able to break the wall, but it is too late. The bomb explodes and the children, together with Alan Chaffee, die. While driving the car, David's mother tells him they will go to a place where no one knows them.

Cast

 * Christopher Reeve as Dr. Alan Chaffee
 * Kirstie Alley as Dr. Susan Verner
 * Linda Kozlowski as Jill McGowan
 * Thomas Dekker as David McGowan
 * Mark Hamill as Reverend George
 * Lindsey Haun as Mara Chaffee
 * Karen Kahn as Barbara Chaffee

Production
Attempts were already made before to remake Village of the Damned since Invasion of the Body Snatchers had been successfully remade in 1978. It finally wounded up at Universal who approached Carpenter to remake it because of his success in remaking the movie The Thing from Another World.

David’s subplot as he struggles with a humanity that’s foreign to the other children is the only notable alteration made to the 1960 original that gives the spectator a feeling as though serious thought was put into it. Additionally the special effects for the movie are better developed because of the advances made in that area since then.

It was also the last movie Christopher Reeve starred in before he was paralyzed on May 27, 1995 from a horse race which left him a spinal cord injury that turned him into a quadriplegic.

Reception
The movie was a box office failure. It also received a mediocre critical response. Finally, it is not considered by them as one of the best movies of John Carpenter.