Crap Bag

Happy feelings can save your soul

James Van Der Beek. If that doesn’t tell you what you need to know about this movie here’s a quick rundown. Children of the Corn VII (this is just an arbitrary number) got into a head on collision with Dawson’s Creek and the life support they were put on was pulled from an episode of Star Trek regarding the Borg. The movie starts with every child on earth seizure themselves into a coma for the next ten years. They convert the high school gym into a warehouse to store the majority of these kids. Everyday twice a day these kids will seizure. Somehow these daily seizures are making these kids turn into zombies. Enter Dawson, I mean James Van Der Beek, straight from prison with a copy of the grapes of wrath. He visits his brother for a place to stay and that’s where he learns about the child related epidemic that’s spreading across the world. He then tries to look up his ex-wife who dismisses him quite readily. After checking in with his parole office he encounters the only kids that aren’t in a coma as well as his brother in law who likes to drink beer in the ally beside the police station. James returns to his brother’s place and after falling asleep in front of the TV a noise wakes him up. He goes to check on his nephew but he is not there. He finds that his brother is dead and that his nephew is awake and pissed off. After a brief tussle the brother-in-law shows up and tosses the nephew out the window. They head to the hospital to find the ex-wife and find out that all the children are awake and killing anyone over 18. The two non comatose kids from the station are able to blend in and inform the adults as to what is happening. A hand full of survivors tries to escape but the somehow psychically linked kids find them and kill them. With the help of some of the police the remaining survivors mange to escape to a church. There they find some notes by the local priest who has some idea of what is going on and how to prevent it. The next morning they find out that the kids are now smart enough to disable cars and operate firearms. Their escape hindered and pretty much everyone dead James decides to try the priest’s idea which seems to save his ex-wife but his soul gets absorbed by one of the kids or something to that effect.

Eberts Thumb

Not the master of dialogue

Clive Barker may be the master of suspense, but he sure isn't the master of dialogue. Well, he still might be since he only produced The Plague, but its his name on the cover so he gets the blame.

Crap Bag explains the plot pretty well. Apparently 2 seizures a day and IV fluids are enough to keep a growing teen in shape. The Plague looks like it could have been a theatrical release, but fell just short. It probably wouldn't have done well, but at least people would have heard about it before it was out on DVD.

The good parts of The Plague are that it had some truly suspenseful scenes and was pretty well acted. The early parts with the kids were genuinely creepy. The bad parts of The Plague are the parts in-between the suspenseful scenes and the last quarter of the movie. Things fall apart when the characters have to talk to each other. Then we are treated to long pauses and inane dialogue. The last quarter of the movie was annoying to watch because given the choice of escape and certain death our heroes choose certain death. All to get guns from the police station. This didn't make any sense to us since its the South so everyone should already have a gun, and that they wouldn't pick up the guns from the teens they shot.

Getting nit picky though, the plague in The Plague wasn't actually a plague. It wasn't spread to anyone by rats or fleas like the real plague. Kids under 10 just woke up and had it. And theres no cure. At the end of the movie, its never explained why they got it. So really its more of an affliction. I guess putting "The Affliction" on a DVD case won't get it picked up to often though.

El Chupacabra

Interesting premise, lackluster follow-through

The Plague was entertaining to watch for the first 30 minutes. James Van Der Beek was entertaining to watch for the first 30 seconds. The premise was interesting, the initial mood was ominous, and the my hope for a diamond in the rough ran high. Unforunately, James Van Der Beek and company couldnt keep the momentum and this low budget sci-fi horror thriller petered out with an ending that, despite my considerable mental prowess, seemed to be nonsense filled with symbolism that was lost on I and a large part of the human species.

The idea of all the children on earth lapsing into mysterious mouth-foaming comas all at the same time came with little explanation. One day Jimmy is reading comic books, the next day he's comatose in his bed with a waxy complexion and huge dark rings around his eyes. Did I mention that each child also experiences seizures twice daily at an appointed time in concert with every other child? Not many doctors would label that a plague and I would be more inclined to compare it to a computer virus. Despite the flimsy backgrounder, the decent cinematography and direction helped build a sense of suspenseful wonder. Are aliens controlling our children? Is is a zombie virus? An especially ominous scene occurs in a school gymnasium 10 years after the onset of The Plague. Rows and rows of hospital beds containing children and teenagers of varying ages fill the large room. It was a lot like a high school dance. As the clock on the wall nears 10, the nurses and doctors gather at the entrance as every child begins to shake and gesticulate violently, yet in strangely orchestrated unison. This is when the climax of the movie comes for me, that gleeful moment where you know all hell is about to break loose. It's like the scene in War of the Worlds when everyone is standing around the crack in the street and the rumble from below loudens. It's the calm before the storm after which the world is irrevocably changed.

I won't ruin it for you, but it was decent despite the lingering confusion as to why all these kids were unconcious in the first place. Some other puzzling issues where how the children were being fed, where their poop went, and who had been cutting their hair for the past ten years. Despite being comatose, they were all in regular street clothes with brush cuts, pony tails, and hair spray and neither feeding tubes or diapers were present, two items I thought would be key to keeping someone in a coma from starving and making quite a large mess.

Despite the subsequent 28 Days Later zombie-esque moments, the movie started to fizzle as a rather weak plot and poor acting were revealed. Jame Van Der Beek did not add much to the movie other than an exact replica of James Van Der Beek from Dawson's Creek. His inability to circumvent a gaint heap of garbage blocking the escape route is disconcerting as is his refusal to arm himself against an army of possessed adolescents. I will cut the movie some slack for having zombie-like creatures wield guns and disable cars because they were not traditional zombies and arose from some other mysterious porcess (possible related to Revelation?!) that we are not made privy to for the duration of the film. If anyone out there can explain what the ending was about other than being a commercial for the Grapes of Wrath, then please email me.