Kids… They just seem to go grow up so quickly don’t they? One second you’re cradling them in your arms as newborns, tossing a baseball back and forth, helping them with homework; the next you’re dodging their tiny knife-wielding hands as they try to slit your throat, or bludgeon you with any assortment of blunt objects… Ah, kids… Aren’t they just grand?

Continuing the re-birth of “kids gone bad”, Plague Town arrives with the seal of “blah” we’ve come to expect from this already tired subgenre. I’m not sure what’s in the air, but a lot of filmmakers are finding kids quite the unrelenting antagonist these days. And while that can be perfectly understandable, it’s time for these writers and directors to quit with the idea of “evil kids mercilessly killing” and ACTUALLY make a story with a beginning, middle and end to back up the drained premise. We’ve all seen these kinds of stories play out since “Who Can Kill a Child”, “The Village of the Damned” and even “The Good Son” (you know, when Macaulay Culkin was still significant). Knowing that, directors by now should have enough of a foundation to actually make a culturally relevant film about the horrors caused by children and the parents which condone it. Let’s see, just within the last year we’ve had “Home Movie,” “Eden Lake”, “Vinyan”, “Joshua”, “King of the Hill” and now, we even have the upcoming “Orphan” slated for a July release. Out of all of these films, I believe “Eden Lake” to be the most realistic, yet the ugliest as well. On a pitch-perfect level of narrative and emotion, however, I give high acclaim to “King of the Hill”. Despite my feelings though, all of these films (outside of “King of the Hill”) derive the same morbid, hopeless conclusion that the seeds which have been sown cannot be uprooted. That the sins of the father don’t just pass to their children---they completely envelop them.

Now, while children are influenced by their parent’s actions as well as the culture they’re living in (remember, it takes a village…), there has to be a better way of not only making a statement about it, but a movie as well. Honestly, this is all just getting old. Some people don’t have the right to be parents. We get it. Some kids take after said parents. Got that, too. Some kids are just evil. Okay. So now, taking all of that into consideration---how about someone make a good film revolving around all of this disquieting content? Hmm? Any takers? Or are we as the choir doomed to repetitive teachings?

But I digress…

If you couldn’t tell by now, Plague Town is not a revitalization of this dying horror cliché. In fact, it takes a couple of steps back---right into the grave again---and buries itself another six feet deep. The sad thing is that I was truly looking forward to this… Thank God I put it back on the shelf when I contemplated buying before seeing…

Starting off, Plague Town plays out like a high majority of the horror drivel that’s already out there. American tourists get lost while touring a countryside, make bad decision after bad decision, run into a horde of disfigured children, get killed one-by-one, continue to make bad decision after bad decision, yada, yada, yada… Now, this wouldn’t be so bad if there wasn’t one HUGE aspect plaguing (oh yeah, I went there) the whole damn thing---the film’s actual level of production. From the get-go every possible narrative and technical aspect of the film is drowning in a pool of its own sub-par style. Apparently, no one believed creating an actual film around a creepy-looking girl was important. Instead, they let all of the cinematic importance gurgle and thrash below the murky depths as they go on acting as if they’ve got a finished roll of celluloid. Seriously, I cannot express enough how broken this film is. If it were a videogame, it would be unplayable. Problems begin with continuity and don’t let up until nearly every rule of film is utterly destroyed. Awful character blocking and camera placement combine to create numerous confusing scenes. At one point, the father tells his family that he’s going to talk to a local villager. They don’t want him to, but he goes anyway with their young British “tour guide” following right along. So that’s fine, but as the two men are conversing with the reluctant villager, suddenly the daughter is speaking to them as well. Wait, what---? Suddenly, the entire family is with them, despite the fact that they were up the hill behind them, waiting for the two men to return in just the previous shot. This is JUST the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the overall continuity of the entire piece. Characters, placement, shots and actions seem to all happen in a world all their own that have NO effect on everything going on outside of them. Things just get worse in the audio department as sound (be it dialogue or music) will inadvertently cut out during scenes for no apparent reason other than improper mixing. Okay, what next? Oh yes, the characters themselves! Ah, of course! Now, this is where things get really baffling as various characters make some of the STUPIDEST, most MINDLESS maneuvers and then somehow make them even stupider and even more mindless. An example… One character is looking through a small, dilapidated home for anyone that can offer help. (Not considering the continuity errors here) the character is stabbed in the shoulder with a shard of glass by a snickering girl who trots off. So what does he do? He pulls it out with a grunt, stands up, and continues looking around as if nothing just happened---as if he’s used to this sort of thing… What follows is so laughable that it makes that scene look sane.

Honestly, for me to go through every fault and issue that so blatantly drenches every frame would take a thesis to complete. What’s worse is the apparent pay-off that multiple critics have been given for their praise of the film. Their words of valor and excellence are absolutely false and seem to blanket the fact that these reviewers have yet to even watch the film. If they had, they would have noticed the flaws dancing on their irises. These quotes of greatness have even been “planted” by those associated with the film on Amazon (which seems to be an ongoing problem). This falsehood of advertising should only serve to reinforce everyone’s need to take each and every review (including mine), with a grain of salt.

While the undeniable sloppiness of Plague Town can be chalked up to the fact this is the director’s (David Gregory) first real film (though he has worked on quite a few others), it still doesn’t justify it one bit. There’s no reason this film should have turned out this way. As it is, it’s in dire need of some seriously proper post-production attention. Sadly, that ain’t gonna happen. So what we’re stuck with is the epitome of cinematic slop and the empty, contradicting praise which helped fuel it.