Adapted from John Wyndham’s chilling novel The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), Wolf Rilla’s Village of the Damned taps into fears of alien invasion and mind control.
Set in a quiet, unassuming English village (Midwich is supposedly based on the Sussex town of Midhurst), the first half of the film deals with a bizarre blackout which causes all those in the area to inexplicably fall asleep. From then on the village is never the same and Rilla allows the uncanny to play out to full effect. The second half gives human form to the unknown threat as creepy blonde-haired children of high intelligence with a sinister agenda of their own.