Plague Town

Sometimes low-budget horror movies exceed expectations, with the lack of capital forcing filmmakers to focus on innovative stories instead of elaborate gore effects to scare the audience. Unfortunately Plague Town isn't one of those movies. Instead we get a paint-by-numbers, "lost in the woods" tale, replete with stereotypical "wander from the group and die" scenarios and a lack of plot that detracts from the few entertainingly gruesome and creative deaths scenes. Rural Connecticut stands in for rural Ireland, where a family undergoing some by-the-book conflicts regarding their new step-mother are vacationing off-the-beaten-track, inexplicably joined by a random British guy (James Warke) who's banging the oldest daughter and raising tension levels with his chav-like behaviour. Of course, the family get stranded in the middle of nowhere and as the sun goes down the mutant children come out to play. Why there are mutant children and how they've managed to elude authorities while violently torturing wayward tourists in semi-public venues is never fully explained but who needs explanations when you have mediocre special effects and porn-quality acting? The "let's talk to the writer, director and producer who have an inflated sense of their talent" special feature is made train wreck watchable by the shockingly unprofessional inebriation of producer David Curl, who slurs and swears his way through the whole thing while trying to convince the viewer that Plague Town is a great piece of horror filmmaking. Some of the mutant children costumes are pretty creepy but a little good costume design does not a good film make. Avoid Plague Town like, well... you know.