An American family on a "family unit strengthening" vacation gets stranded in the terrible and dangerous wilds of Ireland as represented by Connecticut. Little do dad Jerry (David Lombard), slightly gothy daughter with a never explored, used, or clearly defined history of mental illness Molly (Josslyn DeCrosta), annoying bitchy daughter Jessica (Erica Rhodes), future wife/step-mom Annette (Lindsay Goranson) or Jessica's new British boyfriend Robin (James Warke) know that they have stepped into the territory of a village full of murderous, mutant children, and insane adults on the look-out for outsiders to "clean their seed".
I don't think I have to explain anything of what happens to the tourists in detail. You have seen it all before.
Plague Town is quite a disappointment. On a technical level, it's extremely solid - the acting is perfectly fine, the make-up effects go from solid to brilliant (in the case of Rosemary), photography and editing are excellent. But not much of this technical expertise is put to any use by a script that seems to go out of its way to avoid anything that could be interpreted as originality, intelligence or the truly weird. Instead, the viewer is presented with a series of scenes taken word for word out of the scripting handbook for backwoods horror films.
For every small flicker of brilliance or strangeness, there's a dozen rote clichés, as well as a tone deafness about which of the elements of the film's world are truly terrifying and which ones just the usual tripe about mad country people that I found rather disheartening.
The film features two or three very creepy scenes, though, and for one or two minutes at about the hour mark I even had the feeling that director David Gregory would finally stop to repeat element after element and scene after scene I (and therefore probably everyone else who watches horror films from time to time) have already seen in so many other movies, show a little more trust in his own abilities and start making his own film.
Alas, whenever the potential of, say, feminist horror or all-out weird body horror appears, it all too soon slinks back into the shadows to be replaced by uninspired variations of the same old, same old, done competently enough, but deeply uninvolving.
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2 comments:
I found this movie could be much improved in the same way most indie horror could be improved: by having the director set out to make a short, rather than feature, film.
And please, horror films, please...retire the "super ultra bitchy" character.
I'm not too optimistic that this wouldn't just lead to the people making the films cutting out the more interesting parts of their scripts and delivering something like "The Twilight Zone --- but with gore!".
I'd be satisfied if the bitchy character would get a second character trait. Of course, they'll probably just make 'em the bitchy comic relief to double the pain.
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