Le Village des damnés

John Carpenter a modernisé et commercialisé le sujet classique. Le jeu des yeux des enfants semble plus sexy, l'image en noir et blanc a été remplacée par la richesse des couleurs de l'environnement et des costumes des protagonistes, et le film compte une large pléiade de stars. Cependant, cela n'a pas suffi. Parce que même s'il a essayé d'envelopper tout cela dans un linceul de mystère sombre, voir son traditionnel soundtrack sombre, le résultat manque complètement de l'atmosphère originale. Comme si Carpenter lui-même était hypnotisé par l'un des enfants pendant le tournage. Il mérite peut-être l'attention des fans de Star Wars qui veulent voir Mark Hamill dans le rôle d'un pasteur névrosé. (27/05/2002)

An inoffensive adaptation of Wyndham's classic that suffers from a slightly softened Carpenter who seems to have run out of bizarre ideas for disposing of people, which is quite unfortunate because the material was perfect for it. It’s not boring, but I did forget it after a few days. (05/03/2009)

A bad B-movie in the spirit of the bad B-movies of the 1950s. A deadly serious but ultimately unintentionally ridiculous plot, clueless actors and a few interesting scenes, but you should probably just watch them on YouTube and not bother with the whole film. (03/04/2021)

Given the distaste with which Carpenter approached this film, I'm quite inclined to think that at some point he just stopped coming to the set, so the rest of the crew just shot close-ups of the child actors' faces in each location and then edited the result from there. Then if there's one thing the script completely resigned itself to, it's translating the 1950s subject matter into the 1990s and American realities (a California village becomes a zone where everyone falls into a deep sleep for six hours and it doesn't leak to the media, yeah right). The highlights are the performances by Mark Hamill and Christopher Reeve, which could knock you off your horse. (22/10/2020)