The 8th Plague

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.

Only if you think that some brunette chick with nice body, holding huge axe and waving it few times during the entire movie is something you're into, then you go for it!

If you look anything other in the movie you let me be clear:

1) There is no directing 2) There is no acting 3) There are no characters 4) There are no effects 5) Gore is more funny, or at best cases just disgusting, but not scary 6) The Plot is EXTREMELY predictable

Hereby saying all that I understand that it is just "B" movie and expectations must not be high, but this movie fails even at that level as I have seen lots of "B" movies, and if they weren't cinema masterpieces, at least many of them just didn't suck and were fun to watch...

this movie fails at all levels...

Okay, so there are only about two things in this world that get me hot. One: the sound my XBOX 360 makes when it starts up, and the second: an attractive girl covered in blood, carrying a large red fire axe. Yep, that about does it for me. Seeing how the poster of THE 8th PLAGUE depicts one of these magical properties, I was more then pleased when asked to review the film.

THE 8th PLAGUE is about a girl with gorgeous green eyes named Launa who heads out to the town of Halcyon Springs with a few others, to look for her missing sister, Nikki. Launa and the gang quickly team up with local police officer, Buck, and the mysterious Mason (D.J. Perry), another local. Shortly afterward, they come across the deteriorating Halcyon Ridge Correctional Facility, where the majority of the film plays out. It's on this hallowed ground where our heroes learn that the 'curse of The 8th Plague' is still very much alive. What's the curse you ask? Watch the freaking movie! Jeeeeeez!

So watching THE 8th PLAGUE, at first I found that everything was pretty much business-as-usual. Nothing was overly impressive, but nothing outright sucked, either. The majority of the first act is spent following Launa and her friends as previously described. We are treated to a few creepy sequences but for the most part, it's straight-ahead story development. Some people will like this and some won't; my feelings were somewhere in between. The music and cinematography were great, but even then I found myself a tad bored at times. I think the problem was that I didn't care much for Launa and company. A simple scene showing them hanging out laughing together would have helped. A few jokes, perhaps?

Once the gang runs into Mason, (a.k.a. the mysterious local who knows a thing or two about a thing or two) that's the key plot point of the whole movie. It's an important moment because a) D.J. Perry comes into the picture and he's damn fun to watch, and b) the almighty red axe is introduced! From this point on, when they head out to the abandoned Correctional Facility, is where the film begins to earn its gold stars. Once inside, most of the 'Scooby-Doo crew' decide to look around, except for Crystal (Hollis Zemany) who decides that she wants to screw her dorky boyfriend and quickly strips down. ("Mmmmm….gratuitous sex…." Homer Simpson moans.) While the scene felt completely out of place in such a serious film, it was still a treat to watch. The girl's got some good lookin' stems, nice stomach and boobies to die for. We thank you Hollis, from the bottom of our skeevy little hearts!

But where THE 8th PLAGUE truly shines is in the gore and special effects department. One of my favorite scenes is when one unfortunate demon takes an axe to the mouth. It was very well-done considering the budget, but even in a mega-budget film it would be pretty damn impressive. I mean, during the final twenty minutes of the film it's as if everyone's taken a blood bath, literally. Main characters are dying left and right, the plague is working overtime, people are cutting their eyes out, pools of blood the size of small lakes are forming everywhere. It's pretty insane! Even my wife couldn't watch it anymore, and she eats racks of raw meat for breakfast! The final minute is pretty cool, too. (Do I smell a sequel? Oh, no… that's just puke on my shirt from last night. Damn Playboy Mansion parties!)

The only real complaints I have with this film were with the pacing, a few sketchy acting moments from the supporting cast and some of the production values. I love that artists today can make films reasonably cheap because of technology, but I find it nearly impossible to invest on an emotional level when dealing with digital cinematography. I'm just constantly reminded that I'm watching a movie. That's the format's main downfall; nearly impossible to ignore. With that being said, the filmmakers did a great job with what they had. I don't think the film could have looked or sounded any better. To die-hard horror fans like us, this is nothing new, anyway. At this point, half the stuff coming out now is shot with the more affordable digital format, which I support one-hundred percent.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by THE 8th PLAGUE. I think it's a solid first feature for director Franklin Guerrero Jr. and crew, so much so that I would easily check out his next project based on the quality of this one. If you happen to stumble across it at your local video store, it's definitely worth picking up. I give you my guarantee that it's better then most other flicks you'll find dominating the middle shelf.

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.