~Spoiler~
We've all been anticipating the release of Clive Barker's The Plague for quite some time. I began getting worried when I found out that it was skipping theaters. This could only mean trouble. I was right. First of all, the movie should have been called Clive Barker PRESENTS The Plague. Much like Wes Craven has been doing for years, it seems like Barker only lent his name to this project. I doubt he made any creative decisions. That's not to say the film didn't have any creativity. The Plague had one of the most potentially cool plots in years. All the children the world over who are under the age of 10 slip into comas for no apparent reason. They stay in this state for 10 years and have seizures everyday. But they stay strong and healthy, which is the scary part. What are they being prepared for? That's the set-up for the movie. Then we are introduced to our heroes, which include James Van Der Beek, Ivana Milicevic, Brad Hunt, and Dee Wallace in a cameo. Anyone who can't get past Van Der Beek's Dawson's Creek past need only watch The Rules of Attraction to see he's moved on. He's becoming quite a good actor and no one should be put off by him being in a genre picture. We get to know the characters a bit before the children wake up...and all hell breaks loose. There are shades of The Children, Mutant, and 28 Days Later here. In other words, it's a non-zombie, zombie movie. And it's particularly effective up until our band of heroes get to the church. That's where the film slows down, painfully. It has opportunities to recover but it never does. And the ending just stupefies me more than anything. It's awful. There was supposedly some studio tampering here, but I can't imagine the ending is their fault. I would think the studio would want to dumb things down instead of going for biblical overtones. The filmmakers could have wrapped it up better than they did. Hell, they didn't have to wrap it up at all. They could have left things unanswered and it would have been a better movie.
We've all been anticipating the release of Clive Barker's The Plague for quite some time. I began getting worried when I found out that it was skipping theaters. This could only mean trouble. I was right. First of all, the movie should have been called Clive Barker PRESENTS The Plague. Much like Wes Craven has been doing for years, it seems like Barker only lent his name to this project. I doubt he made any creative decisions. That's not to say the film didn't have any creativity. The Plague had one of the most potentially cool plots in years. All the children the world over who are under the age of 10 slip into comas for no apparent reason. They stay in this state for 10 years and have seizures everyday. But they stay strong and healthy, which is the scary part. What are they being prepared for? That's the set-up for the movie. Then we are introduced to our heroes, which include James Van Der Beek, Ivana Milicevic, Brad Hunt, and Dee Wallace in a cameo. Anyone who can't get past Van Der Beek's Dawson's Creek past need only watch The Rules of Attraction to see he's moved on. He's becoming quite a good actor and no one should be put off by him being in a genre picture. We get to know the characters a bit before the children wake up...and all hell breaks loose. There are shades of The Children, Mutant, and 28 Days Later here. In other words, it's a non-zombie, zombie movie. And it's particularly effective up until our band of heroes get to the church. That's where the film slows down, painfully. It has opportunities to recover but it never does. And the ending just stupefies me more than anything. It's awful. There was supposedly some studio tampering here, but I can't imagine the ending is their fault. I would think the studio would want to dumb things down instead of going for biblical overtones. The filmmakers could have wrapped it up better than they did. Hell, they didn't have to wrap it up at all. They could have left things unanswered and it would have been a better movie.