Horror 2025 Countdown: Village of the Damned (1995)

Village of the Damned (1995), dir. John Carpenter, Alphaville Films 

John Carpenter's career was in an odd state in the mid-90s. A few critically acclaimed and few busts in equal measure put him in a kind of grey zone, with this being more contractual obligation than passion. 

At 10:00 AM exactly, the entire village of Midwich falls asleep. Regardless of their activities, all humans and animals fall over and don't wake up until 4:00 PM that same day. Which is extremely bad for the poor fellow working the barbeque.

Soon afterwards, ten women discover they're pregnant. Which comes to quite a surprise, as one has never held a boy's hand and the other's husband has been in Japan for the past year. The pregnancies developed at a fast pace and soon all the babies are delivered at the same time, all save for one who is stillborn.  

The children soon grow up but something is off. They all have pale skin, nearly white hair, and fierce blue eyes. They also seem to have paired off with each other, all save for David (Thomas Dekker). His mate was the stillborn one and of the group he seems to be the only with anything resembling human morality.

Oh, and all the kids have psychic powers too. Dr. Chaffee (Christopher Reeve) and his wife Barbara (Karen Kahn) find this out the hard way when their daughter Mara (Lindsey Haun) forces her mother to walk off a cliff. 

The children are clearly sinister. Reverend George (Mark Hamil) sees the only solution is to gun the kids down as fast as possible, but Mara makes him turn the gun on himself. 

With the situation spiraling out of control, will the people be able to stop their children?

Could have been better, but it also could have been worse. You can tell this is just a work for hire but that's not to mean anyone slacks off.