Plague Town

Released by: Dark Sky Films
Released on: 5/12/2009
Director: David Gregory
Cast: Josslyn DeCrosta, Erica Rhodes, James Warke, Lindsay Goranson, David Lombard, Kate Aspinwall
Year: 2008
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The Movie:

David Gregory's name is one that should be familiar to all serious genre film enthusiasts. Through his work at Anchor Bay Entertainment, Blue Underground, Severin Films, Dark Sky Films and others he's given us such classic documentaries as The Wicker Man Enigma, The Joe Spinell Story, and the excellent The Godfathers Of Mondo feature length expose that accompanied BU's sterling Mondo Cane collection. He's helped bring Black Emmanuelle back to us and more recently unleashed The Sinful Dwarf on an undeserving populace and he's indelibly left his mark on the collective populace of movie geekdom. In short, the man does really good work, and thankfully that adjective applies not only to his documentary work, but to his feature film debut, Plague Town, as well.

The movie is centered around a small Irish village where a family of visiting American tourists decides to stop while on vacation. Things seem perfectly quaint to them at first - the scenery is picturesque and things seem relaxed in that typically rural sort of way that city folk just don't get to appreciate that often. Eventually this unfortunate family - Molly (Josslyn DeCrosta), Jessica (Erica Rhodes), Jerry (David Lombard), and Annette (Lindsay Goranson) - soon find out that the people who live in this small town hide a very dark and sinister secret, and that a young girl named Rosemary (Kate Aspinwall) may very well by the centrifuge.

Shot in upstate New York, which surprisingly enough does a pretty convincing job of standing in for what this reviewer can only assume, having never personally been there, Ireland would look like. The remote locations used for the shoot definitely deliver loads of atmosphere and make for a prefect location for the film's ghastly tale to play out over top of. It's atmosphere, really, that makes Plague Town as good as it is. The acting is a bit uneven in spots, though generally it's acceptable and at times actually quite good, but the atmosphere is damn near perfect.

Of course, this being a straight out horror film in the true and undiluted sense of the word, there are a few stand out set pieces. The gore is delivered in convincing and ample amounts and a couple of scenes are scary enough to have some legitimate staying power. Gregory paces the film quite nicely making for a lean picture that moves at a good clip and never overstays its welcome. The lighting, musical score and sound effects are all very appropriate and effective and fit the tone of the picture very nicely and the few moments of comic relief never feel out of place or hurt the film's often times ominous tone.

Plague Town isn't a perfect movie - the acting is a bit over done in spots and the script, while a whole lot of good scary fun, is a little predictable in spots - but it's definitely a very entertaining one. For his first attempt at a feature, Gregory has done an impressive job and delivered a horror film that's bloody, slick, and plenty entertaining.

Video/Audio/Extras:

Gregory and company shot this film on 16mm so the movie has that sort of gritty feel that is so often inherent in the format, but it works to the movie's advantage here and this AVC encoded 1080p HD transfer really shows off a lot more detail than you'd probably expect. As it was with the standard definition release, grain is present but held firmly in check as it should be for such a recent film, while print damage is never a problem. The 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer makes use of a very cool color palette so don't expect colors to leap off the screen at you, instead, expect the movie to look appropriately sickly and ominous - a very good thing indeed when taken in the context of this particular movie. There's considerably more detail and noticeably better color reproduction here than there is on the SD release, particularly in the darker scenes which show off much better shadow detail and look considerably less murky.

Dark Sky gives Plague Town a very strong DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track as well as a PCM 2.0 Lossless track - both sound great. There's some very eerie surround activity present in a few key scenes that really help to build atmosphere while the soundtrack has some welcome kick to it that helps punch things up when the need arises. Levels are well balanced and dialogue always sounds clean and clear. Subtitles are provided in English, French and Spanish.


Director and co-writer David Gregory is joined by producer Derek Curl for an audio commentary that covers pretty much every aspect of the production you'd expect it to. They discuss where some of the ideas for the film came from, and tell a few interesting stories from the trenches. Casting, location shooting, and effects work are all covered and they also touch on some of the editing work, the score, and a few other areas. It's a fairly active talk and the pair is rarely at a loss for words when it comes to talking about this obviously rather personal project.

From there we move on to the DVD's two featurettes (both of which were shot by our own Eddie Samuelson), the first of which is A Visit To Plague Town. At nearly a half an hour in length, this documentary features a wealth of interviews with the cast and crew members as well as a load of behind the scenes footage. While the commentary gave you behind the camera perspective on the making of the picture, this featurette lets the performers tell their side as well and it makes for an interesting watch. The second featurette is The Sounds Of Plague Town and it lets the film's composer and foley artist talk about their work on the picture. Given how important the sound mix is to the film, it's nice to see them get a chance to discuss their efforts and it's interesting to learn about this often times fairly overlooked aspect of moviemaking.

Exclusive to the Blu-ray release is Scathed, a forty-minute student film that Gregory shot years back in 1995. It's a decent film with a fairly twisted sense of humor that all builds up to a pretty unexpected conclusion. It's a little less polished than Plague Town and was obviously made with a low budget and without a world of experience, but it's entertaining none the less and worth checking out for those who enjoy 'quirky.'

Rounding out the extra features is the film's original theatrical trailer, some classy animated menus, and a chapter selection sub-menu. All in all, the supplemental material here is pretty strong and of quite good substance.

The Final Word:

An atmospheric and well made horror film, Plague Town receives a very strong Blu-ray release from Dark Sky Films with a strong transfer, good audio, and a host of interesting extra features.