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the 1960 film

Village of the Damned is a 1995 American science fiction horror film directed by John Carpenter, written by David Himmelstein, and starring Christopher Reeve, Linda Kozlowski, Kirstie Alley, Michael Paré, Mark Hamill, and Meredith Salenger. It is a remake of the 1960 film of the same name, itself based on the 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. The 1995 version is set in Northern California, whereas the book and original film are both set in the United Kingdom. The 1995 film was marketed with the tagline, "Beware the Children". This was the last publicly released film starring Reeve before he was paralyzed in an equestrian accident in May 1995, as well as his last theatrically released film. The film received negative reviews from critics and failed at the box office upon release.

The people and animals of the sleepy coastal town of Midwich in Marin County, California fall asleep at a 10 AM "blackout" and regain consciousness at 4 PM. Following the blackout, ten women of child bearing age mysteriously fall pregnant, including a virgin girl and a married woman who has not been sexually active for a year due to her husband being away for work in Tokyo. None of them seek abortions after having dreams, and all the babies are born the same night in a barn – five boys and five girls, though the virgin's daughter is stillborn due to umbilical cord asphyxia. The surviving children are healthy but have pale skin, white blonde hair, cobalt eyes, and fierce intellect. However, they do not appear to possess a conscience or individual personalities. They display eerie psychic powers that can result in violent and deadly consequences whenever they experience pain or provocation. The children soon "pair off" like mates, except for David, whose intended mate was the stillborn girl. As a result, David is the outcast of the group. Although he retains some degree of psychic powers, he also has the ability to show human compassion. He talks to his mother, Jill McGowan, the school principal, and begins to understand his situation. The children's leader is Mara, the daughter of the physician, Dr. Alan, and his wife, Barbara. As a baby, Mara used her powers to force her mother to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff. Her mate is Robert. The children, who now have a bad reputation in town, eventually move to the local barn as their classroom for survival. Local priest Father George attempts to shoot them, only for Mara to use her powers and force George to shoot himself. Soon, it is learned that there are other colonies of blackout children in foreign countries, but due to their inhuman nature, they were quickly eliminated, in some cases at the cost of destroying the entire town. The scientific team in Midwich flees the town to escape the chaos. One of the scientists, Dr. Susan Verner, is forced to show the children the well preserved alien corpse of David's intended mate she secretly kept for research. The children force her to commit suicide by impaling herself. An angry mob gathers to kill the children, but the town descends into chaos. Alan devises a plan to detonate a bomb inside a briefcase in the children's classroom. By thinking of a brick wall, he is able to create a mental barrier and keep the presence of the bomb a secret from the children. Jill begs him to spare David because he is not like the others. Alan attempts to do this by asking David to leave to get his notebook from his car. The children begin to suspect that Alan is hiding something. Mara's true face shows through as she breaks through Alan's defenses, revealing the bomb. The other children look at the clock, and the bomb explodes, killing everyone inside, including Alan. Jill holds David outside during the explosion. While driving, Jill tells David: "We'll go someplace where nobody knows who we are."

Christopher Reeve as Dr. Alan Chaffee, the town doctor The project wound up at Universal, who approached Carpenter to remake it. He said, "I thought, 'Sure, it's an obvious choice, it's easy, that's a pretty easy movie to make.'" He said, "I also knew exactly where to shoot it. I live up there, Inverness, California, and Point Reyes, where we shot The Fog in 1979. I have a house up there. It's paradise; you can stand anywhere, put the camera down and shoot, and you've got it, it's there. It's a small town, plus it's home; I get to shoot at home for a change. So off we went." "You don't have to do much to the original, really," he said. "You've got to bring it up to date, humanize it a little and make the characters rich. When the original was made, you couldn't say the word `pregnant' on screen. So the birth scenes and the women weren't dealt with." Additional graphic violence was added in the remake. The children cause one adult to kill herself by stabbing herself with a scalpel and another adult to immolate herself. In 1996, the film was nominated at the 16th Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip off or Sequel but lost to The Scarlet Letter. Richard Harrington of the Washington Times gave the film a negative review, noting the poor decision making from its characters and the lack of pacing, writing "Carpenter, whose batting average is dipping dangerously low, shows no grasp of character development, plot line or time passage." Lloyd Paseman of The Register Guard said that while the remake did not attempt to make Village of the Damned "something" that its predecessor was not, the film had "mediocre" dialogue and plot development. He gave it two stars out of four. Paseman also remarked that in this film Reeve made an "earnest" attempt, that Kozlowski did the highest quality acting for the film, that Dekker was "credible", and that Hamill was "badly miscast". Janet Maslin of The New York Times was more enthusiastic, regarding it as "John Carpenter's best horror film in a long while". The remake was "mostly more sly than frightening  restaging the original story with fresh enthusiasm and a nice modicum of new tricks." James Berardinelli also gave the film a lukewarm 3/4 star review, calling it "an enjoyable, if obviously flawed, amalgamation of horror and science fiction it starts strong and does a decent job at keeping its momentum until a climactic finale not Carpenter's shining achievement, but he still shows his promise." In a 2011 interview, Carpenter described the film as a "contractual assignment" that he was "really not passionate about" and stated that it is one of his least favorite films that he's made as a director. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.

The design of the characters in the music video for M83's "Midnight City" is based on the film.