Plague Town (2008)

The movie opens in a small Irish village with a woman in labor.  The local priest arrives and after the child is born goes to kill it!  Initially everyone seems to accept this, but then the father stops the priest by bashing his head in.  Years later the action moves to an American family on vacation in Ireland misses their bus home and has to find somewhere to spend the night.  Unfortunately for them the village they walk into is filled with evil, disfigured children who are pretty damn bloodthirsty.  The rest of the movie is the family and their attempts to get out of town and away from the homicidal locals. 

There isn’t anything new here.  This is basically the same story we have seen over and over again with the fish out of water being stalked and terrorized by some locals in a rural setting.  But formulaic movie or not if you do a good job it can still be a blast and Plague Town does a great job.  The pacing of the movie is good with a killer opening scene involving the priest.  It does slow down just a bit as the family is introduced, but after a few minutes establishing the characters jumps right back into the stalk and kill.  There are several fun scenes that are setup nicely and deliver the goods.  In particular I thought the sequence in the abandoned car was creepy.  I also wanted to mention how great the ending is.  I hate when movies have a predictable or lame ending, especially horror movies that like to give you the final shot of the monster or killer popping up.  Plague Town has a downer of an ending, but is also one that will stick with me because of how simple and terrible it is for the character.  The fact that they also set it up earlier in the movie is pretty cool as well.  The acting isn’t too bad, but truthfully the cast isn’t really asked to do that much.  Most of the time they are running for their lives screaming for help, or yelling at each other.  Still that is all you really need for this kind of horror film, so no complaints from me.   

Can’t talk about a movie filled with killer mutant children without talking special effects.  The creature designs are very simple, but creepy as hell.  I was especially impressed with the one girl in the cabin with the painted on eyes, which just got under my skin.  But really all the “creatures” look good in the movie.  The kills are very simple but look great on screen.  There is one kill in the cabin that I wish we had seen more of, but what we do see is pretty cool.  The shotgun to the face and it’s aftermath is some good fun.  Beyond the special effects I really wanted to comment on the camera work.  In addition to the memorable effects and entertaining story the movie looks great.  Oh and before I forget I wanted to say one more thing about the locations.  I would have bet a large sum of money that this movie was shot in Ireland, but it was shot in Connecticut!  I sort of expect larger budget movies to be able to pull that sort of trick, but for a smaller movie like this to do it this well is very impressive. 

The DVD also contains a couple of special features that are worth mentioning.  The first is called A Visit to Plague Town.  This is a 30-minute making of documentary that briefly discusses how the script and story were hammered out, as well as a bit about shooting the movie.  You get great interviews with the director David Gregory and some of the cast members.  I especially liked hearing the experiences of the cast as they were making the movie, including how they got on each other’s nerves.  All in all a nice special feature about the making of a movie that I think is pretty cool.  Also included on the DVD is a 15-minute long documentary called The Sounds of Plague Town, which covers not only the atmospheric score of the movie, but the sound effects as well.  Personally this part of movie making has always fascinated me so I was very interested in this. 

In the end I do recommend that people check out Plague Town.  I found it to be a creepy good time.  The DVD is available from Dark Sky Films.  Check out their website at http://www.darkskyfilms.com/ for more information. 

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2009 John Shatzer