The 8th Plague

In fact I loved the first half. Modern editing, good eye, slow pace, some humor, good soundtrack selection, as well as good color processing. Sweet and cleverly employed references to 80s horror flicks. So, there was a style.

Then suddenly they lost it, when buckets (literally), fountains of artificial blood and bloody porridge came to scene. To be honest, I wouldn't call this a gore fest either - there were only two buckets poured, somewhat three fountains and one bloody porridge. Hell, who let the youngsters into the kitchen? Check, please, I'm leaving.

If you're a gore fan - go for it, but don't complain then about slow pace and longish shootings on landscapes and buildings. If you're looking for some genre inventions or surprises - miss it, there're hardly any. It's not spooky either.

I would only recommend to genre lovers of high tolerance, who can stand the absence of plot and unnecessary gore for the sake of style. Camera is worthy most of the time, sounding is nice sometimes as well. Views of abandoned jail are very moody.

This low-budget haunted prison movie has weak acting and inept camerawork and it looks cheap and ugly, but it's still entertaining, unpredictable and creepy. The soundtrack is a cavalcade of unsettling electronic hums and howls that give the proceedings a deeply nightmarish atmosphere even when nothing much is happening. Leslie Ann Valenza, an actress whose enormous lips appear locked in a permanent frown, searches for her missing sister in a backwoods region near an abandoned prison. Written on one wall inside the filthy old structure is a weird symbol that causes anybody who even looks at it to go completely insane and become instantly possessed by an ancient evil locust-god. The possessed parties turn violent and are difficult to kill, making the film hover close to traditional zombie rampage cinema. There are continuity errors and only a few isolated examples of photography that isn't lousy, but the mood is effectively ominous, the pacing is good and the bloody gore effects are as convincing as anything in much more expensive features. Some of the gore sequences are quite intense and don't pull any punches. The demon-possesed characters and bloody convict ghosts are authentically scary. A major weakness is that, in spite of the title and numerous references to swarms of locusts in the dialogue, we never see so much as one single locust buzzing around. This curious omission of apparently important visual content would've been a lot less noticeable if they had given the film a title like, oh, I dunno, maybe "PRISON OF THE DEMONS" or "LOST SOULS BEHIND BARS" or "THE GIRL WHO'S ALL LIPS VS. THE DEVIL", or some such thing that wasn't a specific reference to a plague of locusts. It's also a bit distracting when we are told that a police deputy can't get his jeep any nearer than a mile from the prison because of the overgrown terrain and then the next group of shots offer plenty of good looks at a perfectly clean road that runs right up to the building. Still, as I said, the whole thing is really creepy and the meager story at least keeps moving right along. For all its flaws, I enjoyed it much more than HOSTEL or SEE NO EVIL, similar-minded gore movies released by major studios which cost a heck of a lot more to produce. I'd definitely watch another horror movie made by these same people. If that sounds like a "Just-Barely-A-Thumbs-Up" rating for THE 8TH PLAGUE, well, that's what I'm giving it.

I saw this movie last night with three others. After about 30 minutes we were hoping that the movie would get much better, because it surely wasn't scary neither was it nice to look at. There were some funny moments in the movie, too bad that the was intention to be scary, but we all changed the perspective of the movie a bit to be at least a little bit entertained.

At the end of the movie a girl who was watching the movie too said "Come on, someone kill her!" about the main character in the movie, because then the movie would end.

I see this movie as a waste of my time and I was not entertained at all. The three others I was watching the movie with thought about it in the same way. The 4.1 rating the movie has at this moment is very realistic in my opinion. Maybe it should have even lower.

Surprised at the low ratings, obviously a lot of non-horror fans unable to deal with a little bit of fake blood. This is a tense, bloody, gritty low-budget splatter flick, nothing more or less. No plot to speak of, shot and directed in such a way as to maintain tension throughout. LOTS of fake blood, gore effects cheap but convincing. The acting is decent too, considering the genre. The infected/possessed/whatever look like they are wearing black-metal makeup for some unknown reason, which is kind of weird. An utterly predictable twist at the end. Unlike most American horror films these days you can empathize with the main character. With most US horror these days I really want to characters to die and get it over with as they are so annoying and obnoxious, but in this case I found myself rooting for the lead to survive the onslaught. If you like zombie films or survival horror you will probably really enjoy this movie, so long as you are not expecting to take away anything deep and meaningful from it.

A bunch of kids go into a prison to find a missing person and meet up with some funky demonic evil. Simple enough plot. I caught this thing in the theater a couple weeks ago. It was a midnight showing and I wasn't doing much so I figured "what the heck". It started out a little slow, but once it got going, it really kicked into gear.

I'm a big time horror buff, and I've been watching a lot of low budget horror flicks lately... Mostly they leave me feeling irritated. I've gotta say, this one was kind of a breath of fresh air from all the other B-flicks I've seen. It really gives you the goods; from blood explosions to guts to unexplainable, yet very enjoyable prison sex. The acting was surprisingly good for a B horror flick... for the most part. The main girl was awesome, especially after showering in demonic blood ha ha.

I was especially impressed that they were able to do what they did with so little relative money. The set design and a lot of the camera work didn't strike me as being uber-low budget.

The Gore FX and makeup were really cool too, look out for the eye scene! The theater was only about half full when I saw this, and when a couple of the gore moments pop up there was definitely some giddy applause from the crowd. I found myself joining in, cheering the gore haven on the screen.

An academy award winner, No, but a good horror fix on a Saturday night... perfect for any horror fan.