Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

In today’s movie ‘Plague Town’ we are introduced to Annette (Lindsay Goranson) who loves her some Jerry (David Lombard) and Jerry loves her right back. The problem is that Jerry’s adult daughters Jessica (Erica Rhodes) and Molly (Josslyn DeCrosta), especially Jessica, don’t love her. To rectify this lack of love and to prove to these girls that she is okay, she has planned a glorious getaway trip to the backwoods of Ireland. Yeah… I know, whaddayagonnado? This is where we pick up on this family of four, with added addition of Jessica’s obnoxious Limey boyfriend Robin (James Warke), as they traipse through this gloomy landscape, trusty map in hand, to see the sights. Note that from our vantage point the only sights these nuts were looking at were grass, rain, open spaces and the occasional tree. You can see this just about anywhere and anywhere is generally devoid of murderous, devil possessed, deformed screeching teenagers. Of course this is in retrospect. Hindsight is 20-20 they say.

So we hang out with this family, dealing with Jessica and her unique way of communicating which basically consists of incessant high pitched whining and bitching, hoping these kids who we only see in the periphery up to this point, kill her. Quick. Naturally the family gets lost, failing to make it to the bus stop in time, and now have to make their way through this gloomy place until morning. As a side note, apparently bus drivers in Ireland are complete dicks. You see five people desperately running down an empty street, mere feet away from the bus chasing it, and you mean to tell me you can’t stop? That’s a dick move right there.

Now what? Well, it’s time to find some shelter. This shelter appears by way of an abandoned Volvo I think it was. Molly, who is mighty weird, knows immediately that something isn’t right because weird knows weird. Of course her family thinks that the girl just tripping, completely oblivious to the deathly screeching and oddly moving bushes, as they all settle down for a nice night in the abandoned Volvo.

For whatever reason, I can’t rightfully remember why, the Limey boyfriend decides to walk of into the mist to look for help with the whiney bitchy sister tagging along with

him. Good things would not happen. The concerned dad would soon follow to look for his daughter, even though I’m sure it can’t be because he loves her. Nobody could love that despite how cute she is. The future step mom and the weirdo sister wait in the Volvo. Everybody will eventually meet The Kids. Some will fare better than others. Note to self: When an ultra weird girl with pale skin in a filthy white dress and fake bulbous eyes requests your seed, that would be her on the box cover, it would be in your best interest to go ahead and stick it to her. It might not be all that bad. Can’t be any worse than the alternative.

Directed by David Gregory ‘Plague Town’ doesn’t spend a lot of time getting into the nuts and bolts of why these kids are so f’d up looking and have the burning desire to mercilessly torture and murder obnoxious American tourists, but for a movie like this one to be effective, possessing all of that knowledge isn’t necessarily required. What is required is that we get to see f’d up kids mercilessly torture and murder obnoxious American tourist in glorious ways. While ‘Plague Town’ took it’s own sweet time in getting to that point, sometimes giving us a sensation similar to something that those tourists would eventually feel, when it did get to the murderization ‘Plague Town’ shook out to be a pretty damn decent movie.

One of the reasons it was a little torturous making it to the good part was probably because spending time with the Monahan family was absolutely no fun. Jessica’s a bitch, Robin is an idiot, Mr. Monahan is spineless and stupid and the future Mrs. Monohan… well I guess she wasn’t so bad. Josslyn DaCrosta’s Molly was the saving grace as far as the characters went, partially because she gives a great Stink-Eye and also because she’s really the only character who we didn’t mind seeing survive. Plus the movie has a color palette that is drab and lifeless and low-lit. While this will work to this films advantage later on, spending time with these people in this drab atmosphere was a challenge.

Then the carnage began. Once people started getting shot in the face, stabbed up, dragged off, skewered through the brain, strung up and gutted… note that I have just described what happened to one character during this movie… now we have a movie worth watching. These kids of unknown evil nature are creepy as hell, the low light and drab atmosphere which wasn’t so hot before is now a great atmosphere for these weird evil kids to completely muck up some obnoxious tourist, and the pace picks up considerably. The mystery of whatever plague has afflicted this little Irish town doesn’t become anymore clearer but the way this movie has accelerated to this point it becomes less important. It’s a little important because a touch of clarity never hurts, but it’s not a deal breaker.

So with ‘Plague Town’ we have a movie that is one half dysfunctional family drama that was no fun to sit through and one half survival horror with this same family getting eviscerated that was a lot of fun to sit through. Half a good movie is always better than no good movie at all where I come from.