Purely Joyful Movie!

Overrated

A Brilliant Conflict

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The director and producer seem to have thought that explicit gore would carry this movie, rather than any storyline. From the first few minutes, one sees a Priest getting a fire poker lodged in his brain -- explicitly -- with the lodger of said poker then -- again, explicitly -- jostling the poker around in the Priest's head because it's gotten stuck. Simple "gore for gore's sake." Disgusting; unnecessary.You see, apparently, the women of this small Irish town have started giving birth to deformed, evil (how would they know?) babies. The Priest keeps killing the newborns off, but the wielder of the poker decides that enough is enough. He kills the Priest, saying: "Shorry, Fadder! We've got to live which arr fate [ . . . or, some such]." That statement turns out to be nothing but a part of the general slew of meaningless nonsense that is in this film.A town plagued with deformed babies? A town plagued with evil babies? A town plagued with both deformed and evil babies? . . . WHO KNOWS? The tag for the movie reads: "It's in the blood." Yet, this is a reference . . . to what, in particular, in the movie? Is blood needed for something? Or, are the evil kids infected?The story's incomprehensible: Why are the kids deformed? Why do the village's inhabitants act like wackoes? What does the thin, white- skinned girl have to do with anything? What IS the "Plague" (i. e., is it the deformity or the desire to kill)?And, also: Could someone, please, explain the significance of the masks? Why do the children wear them? Why do they sometimes not wear them?Who is the white-skinned girl? What's her purpose?In the interviews in the "Extras," the Director says that the killing is like playing for the children. So, . . . they're just PLAYING? Are you kidding me? That attempt at an explanation reveals to me, that once the filming got started he had absolutely no idea in which direction to lead the film. Hence, the reliance on pointless gory scene after gory scene.Not worth your time -- even for the gorehound.

Plague Town is set in Ireland where the Monohan family are trying to enjoy a nice holiday together, sisters Molly (Josslyn DeCrosta) & Jessica (Erica Rhodes) are at each other's throats & constantly argue while their father Jerry (David Lombard) & his wife Annette (Lindsay Goranson) try to keep the peace but when they all become stranded in the Irish countryside after missing the last bus back to civilisation tempers begin to fray. Night quickly falls & the Monohan's seek shelter at a small village but the generations of mutant children born there hide out in the surrounding woods & kill anyone who venture there while the desperate adults steal any young women of child bearing age to try & cleanse the plague that that given birth to the mutant killer children. The Monohan's quickly discover they are in great danger but already it may be too late for them...Co-written & directed by David Gregory apparently under the working title A Slaughter in Plague Town all I can say about this top little horror film is why has it taken me so long to see it? Maybe I am going to praise Plague Town too much simply because there's been so much low budget crap that I have sat through recently it's so nice to see something that I enjoyed, something that is atmospheric, something that is well made (despite it's low budget) & something with some proper gore effects rather than terrible CGI. The horror genre has produced few classic over the past decade or so in my opinion & while I will stop short of calling Plague Town a classic it's one of the best recent low budget horror films that I have seen, for me Plague Town just worked as great horror film & hit all the main notes dead on. The script is economical but quite interesting as well, the basic premise has been done to death with a city family stranded in some woods somewhere being killed off by mutant inbreds in a typical backwoods brutality slasher flick set-up but having children as the main killers (again, not overly original to be fair) adds a certain twist & while the plot is a bit thin on the ground there's enough to keep one interested in where the film is going although a rather open ended climax feels like the film just stops rather than finishes if you know what I mean. The character's are nicely fleshed out, the sarcastic sniping between the Monohan family at the start keeps things moving with a few decent one-liners & insults thrown about while they also act like proper human beings too, when faced with a killer kid Jessica doesn't drive around him she hits him dead on & runs him over! Neither Molly or Jessica take any chances & give as good as they get killing a few of the killer kids along the way. You have to suspend a certain amount of disbelief at a village in a country like Ireland could be so cut off from civilisation that packs of killer mutant kids can roam around but hey, it's only a film & a pretty good one at that.There are some great visuals here & some really good gore scenes without a single instance of CGI anywhere to be seen. The Irish woods & stone cottages in isolated fields add atmosphere while the blood runs freely. A guy has his head sliced in half with piano wire, a guy has a huge kitchen knife stuck through his hand, there are meat cleavers in heads, people are blasted in the face with shotguns, people are beaten, throat's are slit & pour with blood, roots are shoved through heads & bodies are hung up, a kid has a pitchfork stuck through his throat, people are slashed with sickles & there's plenty of blood splatter. The special effects are actually very good I might add. There's a creepy if bizarre girl in this, she is tall & elegant & wears a white dress with long flowing hair & red lips buts she has something wrong with her eyes & they have been replaced with bulging doll's eyes which just look freakish as they never & adds a really cold & creepy look to an otherwise elegant looking woman. A great image & sort of unnerving, I don't really know who she was or what her significance was but shes a creepy little thing.With a supposed budget of about $1,000,000 the makers did miracles here & Plague Town looks much bigger budget than that, although set entirely in Ireland this was actually filmed entirely in Connecticut in the US. The acting is very solid, everyone seems to be having fun & the two leading ladies who plays the sisters are extremely attractive which also helps my overall appreciation of the film.Plague Town is easily one of the best low budget horror films I have seen in years, it's well made with plenty of gore, two great looking leading ladies & a decent if not entirely original plot that gets the job done in a fairly entertaining & fun way. Some great kills & gory effects, some surprisingly creepy visuals & atmospherics & an eighty odd minute run time help make Plague Town one of the best low budget horrors out there.

Having read some of the other reviews of this film before I actually saw it, I wasn't expecting much. To be honest, some of the acting was stiff, and the dialogue wasn't exactly written by Harold Pinter, but those areas are easily forgiven when weighed against the overall feel of the film. A sense of dread permeates the film due to an excellent sound design, great location shooting, minimal dialogue, and as another reviewer pointed out, not every aspect of the story is didactically explained. The filmmaker has respected the audience enough to 'show not tell', which is a welcome change from poorly written claptrap lining the videostore shelves these days. And the ending was fantastic - true horror leaves you with that lump in your throat as you imagine all of the things still left in store for the protagonists once our involvement in the story ends.

This movie is a crazy sort of Children of the Corn/Hills Have Eyes hybrid. Whilst it does have it's moments and a certain level of strangeness going for it, overall the idea simply doesn't work.As soon as the first few mutant babies were born surely the obvious thing to do would be contact a hospital rather than invite the local priest round for a quick execution.In fact like the rest of the UK (remote location or not)a doctor, the local nurse or even a social worker would have been in contact with these pregnant women. Not just some creepy old priest with a sharp knife! If mutant babies were suddenly being born in you're town/village the first conclusion anyone would draw is that we must have been exposed to something. Let's contact the appropriate authority to check things out and then sue the backside off whoever is found to be responsible.Not in this town apparently. The adults for some reason completely ignore the rest of civilisation, teach the children to kill, kidnap and torture.In terms of plot(mutant children not withstanding).......well as has been done a million times before, it's a case of here are some lambs to be slaughtered, let's drop them off and let the killer(s) get on with it! However, the key to this type of formula is to have have interesting, funny or sexy characters combined with inventive kills and a bit of suspense. Unfortunately in this movie the characters and kills are none of the above. I'm afraid twigs and hubcaps just don't cut the corn beef and cabbage sandwich! To be fair though With the budget they had the special effects of the gory bits are a reasonable effort. A nice change from the normal overdone cartoon CGI.3.5 stars out of 10. 4 if you really twisted my arm or slapped me a bit with a twig!