Plague Town

PLAGUE TOWN

Written & Directed by David Gregory

Starring you seriously won't care

More like Crap Town.

My housemate Joe is having a horror binge of late, and recommended this straight-to-DVD title to me. I'm considering having him committed. There is honestly nothing to recommend this terribly made film to anyone. It sucks. It sucks hard. Thank God it's an auteur's work, because I'd hate to think two people could be responsible for this much crap.

A family head into the Irish countryside in search of their roots, bringing along some British git for rumpy-pumpy. As their relationships splinter under the strain of their petty quabbles, the few locals they come across seem more and more threatening. Children with distorted faces attack, and the movie carries on like this for a while, before delivering a SURPRISE TWIST which left me frowning with bitter disappointment.

It would be one thing if the film lacked plot and delivered on the scares. Joe is in favour of minimal plot and maximum atmosphere, and I'm behind him in that. Problem being this film lacks atmosphere completely. I did not once feel frightened, tense, unsettled, unnerved or even amused. This is not a matter of bravery. This is a matter of the filmmaker having no concept of pacing. This film doesn't have 'minimal story', it has an idiotic plot with no progression and a concept so completely lacking in fright value that one struggles to imagine how this ever got funding.

The poor direction bleeds into every aspect of the film. The sound design is rank, with badly recorded foley and syncing. The production design is effective enough when it comes to gore, but shoddy when it comes to the children's supposedly disturbing affectations. The acting is universally terrible. There is a car chase sequence at the end where the same two shots are alternated FOUR TIMES in quick succession - the editing is also rubbish.

The characters, too, fell flat. You can't hate any of them in such a way that you would enjoy their pointless skewering, and you can't like any of them enough to fear for them. Their torture and demise seem utterly pointless and unsavoury. We're talking gore you can't even be disgusted or offended by, but rather plain stupid sequences like the one in which a woman is beaten soundlessly to death with a hubcap. She's dead. And it's horrible. But it's completely unconvincing.

Avoid this trash like the plague.