FilmArcade.net: 2009 Philadelphia Film Festival and Cinefest: "Plague Town" Review

Plague Town
Year: 2009
Director: David Gregory
Studio: Dark Sky Films
Stars: Josslyn DeCrosta, Erica Rhodes, David Lombard
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 87 Mins
Official Website: http://www.plaguetown.com/

“Plague Town” is about a family, who travel to the Irish country land to discover their family roots. Their vacation was going very well, until missed the last bus to main parts of Ireland. Soon they are stranded in countryside, when they discover a village that houses a group of deformed children, who have a deadly secret. The family must now fight for their survival, as these children are bloodthirsty and don’t take too kind to visitors.

There are some films that have an interesting premise and a trailer that makes you think that you are going to have a fun time with a film, like this, but after seeing it, your left with a sour taste in your mouth. That’s the case with this film.

“Plague Town is a dull and very boring horror film that has a screenplay that has many things that didn’t make any sense and unanswered questions. left in the viewer’s mind. Director, David Gregory didn’t do a good job making this film either scary or fun, as this comes off, as a film that was confusing and boring. The dark tone, in his direction did not make me care about the film’s story, as it was too dreary and not enough action to make this fun to watch. If there were any positives that Gregory takes out of this film, it was the fact that the acting was good, as it really wasn’t the actors that ruined this film for me; it was the lousy screenplay that they had to work from.

Speaking of the screenplay, which was written by Gregory and John Cregen. It was one that had many flaws and unoriginal plot lines. To put it in better words, the screenplay was one of your typical story where a group of people get stranded in the middle of nowhere with the typical list of clichéd characters that are annoying. The sad thing about this is, this could have been a very interesting and scary film. One of the things that it isn’t that way, there was no attempt at trying to tell how these kids become this violent. There was a scene in the beginning of the film that goes into the pregnancy of one of these kids. I wished they would have spent the first ten minutes or so that explains how these kids became so murderous. It’s not explained very well and really makes you wonder, if the writers ever cared about the backstory, as it was rushed and not developed. That’s not how you make effective and monstrous horror villains. That’s how you make dumb and stupid killer kid films, which made me not happy with the end result. Another thing that made it flawed, I really didn’t care about the family, in the film, until the last half hour. Up to that point, I didn’t care about any of them. They never fully develop the relationship between each of them, especially with the two sisters. It was like, they just put a group of characters in the middle of nowhere and have them run in fear, even though this film wasn’t scary and was starting to go all over the place near the end, as I never understood about how these kids and their murderous ways.

I was very disappointed with this film, as the trailer looked well and the fact that it’s being distributed by Dark Sky Films with a DVD release set sometime in May. “Plague Town” can be filed as one of those films that should have been a good movie, but had a screenplay that really falls flat on its face.

Review Rating: 1 Star.