It also shows how various countries want to use the children for their own gain. Also the kids themselves are extremely spooky-especially when their eyes are glowing. It's effectively filmed in moody black & white and has some very talented British actors giving good performances. Not as good as the original "Village." but this sequel showed real promise. They're all taken to London to be studied but they escape and barricade themselves in an old, abandoned church. They also have the power to control peoples minds (their eyes glow when they do this). Reviewed by preppy-3 7 / 10 Forgotten semi-sequel to "Village of the Damned"įive super-intelligent, emotionless children are discovered around the world. I think, if I hadn't a clearer idea of what I was aiming for, I'd have left the original alone. I'd like to be able to recommend it more highly but it's left me as confused as the screenplay. What's left at the end resembles the cloud of dust that settles over the now-demolished church. And yet, if that is in fact the message, it comes across as if written in proto-Indo-Hittite. The narrative seemed to be going in a direction similar to that of "The Day the Earth Stood Still." I am sacrificing my life to convince you that you should stop your bickering. I won't get into too detailed an explanation of exactly HOW religion fits in because, mainly, I can't. And the children stand hand in hand while they're martyred. The child who was killed is brought back to life. (For a surreal example of this theme, read John Hersey's novel, "The Child Buyer.") The Cold War material is right up front, but when that dilapidated church first appeared I wondered whether religion were behind the story. Every nation wants to take its own superchild and put its brain to use. There's a lot of rather obvious Cold War intrigue going on. There is a big argument among the military and the scientists about whether they should be destroyed or not, and one of the children is shot dead during a killing spree.įinally, the community deems them too dangerous to survive and brings to bear enormous ordinance to exterminate them and clobber the deconsecrated church they've barricaded themselves in. And they don't hesitate to kill people who try to exploit them. They put together some solar-powered machine that blows the minds of anyone approaching them with even the slightest of hostile intents. They manage to share thoughts with one another without speaking. Why are they there? (Or, let's say, why are they here?) We don't know. And they hole up with their pretty, blond adult servant in a dilapidated church, resisting all efforts to get them to return to their normal lives. We see the kids drawn together in London. What I mean is that there isn't a lot of mystery in most of this movie. But in this instance it means there is no dramatic introduction that's the equivalent of those disquieting first scenes in the original, in which Midwitch is shrouded in some kind of invisible cloud that renders people unconscious the moment they enter it. There is no explanation of how they were born except in the claim of an English mother that she'd "never been touched." In principle, that's okay. Unlike the original, "Village of the Damned," this film skips the introductory stuff and begins in medias res, with the kids already six or seven years old, half a dozen of them, spread around the world in different countries. Reviewed by rmax304823 5 / 10 A puzzle wrapped in an enigma and so forth.
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