Scourge - 2008

 

IMDB Plot Synopsis:

 

An ancient pestilence called The Scourge has been set free in a small town after being entombed in a church's masonry for a century and a half. As bodies rapidly pile up, nothing stands between the spawning Scourge and the rest of the town except our young heroes Scott and Jessie who rediscover their love for each other in the process.

Okay, just to kick things off here's something plucked from the asshole of Netflix. These days my Netflix recommendations read like back page of Fangoria magazine. That is to say stuff you've never heard of... or God Bless you if you have.

The plot summary up there pretty much sums it up. It's got all the makings of your typical horror movie. You've got the bad boy who wants to get his life around but of course once people start turning up dead the local sheriff (who's shockingly corrupt and has it out for him) thinks he's gone on a killing spree, the hot (eeeeehhhhhhh) chick who's feelings are rekindled for him and is the only one who believes him, and a lot of people farting and belching.... ew.

Basically this squidly looking thing (the "scourge") enters through your belly and makes you want to eat... a lot... although it's implied that you'd like to eat people instead of sticks of butter (which one guy does) but hey... whattayagonna do AMIRIGHT?

Once you're infected.... I guess because it went in through your belly it makes you belch and fart and want to eat a lot... btw this is not supposed to be a comedy so the sophomoric humor of everyone going around making toots is sort of lost as they play it pretty straight. Except when the hero and a hot chick get infected of course. Seems the makers decided that hero and hot chick shouldn't fart and belch lest the audience not take them... I dunno, seriously?

So this is sort of a possession / parasite / ancient evil / body snatchers kinda movie which kind of holds up pretty well despite mediocre acting, so-so effects, and a pretty unoriginal plot.

 

Regardless, it's not a BAD bad movie but it's nothing special. The plot sort of just moves along with a lot of suspension of disbelief that's pretty common in these types of movies. "Oh people are dropping dead and bleeding from their eyes and disintegrating? This small town kid must be responsible for it!"

 

Because that's how every small town 20-something chooses to kill people... With his special eye-bleedy melty powers.

 

And of course there's the mad dash on our hero's part to find the latest infected person before it's too late and of course, upon finding them he calmly explains to her "You've seen the reports of people dying on tv, right? I have reason to believe you might be infected because you came in contact with the guy who attacked you that's on the ground bleeding and disintegrating 3 inches from you. Let's call 911 and get you some help."

 

....oh wait, instead of doing that thing he creepily slinks up to her and her friends, grabs her and says "you're going to die if you don't come with me" without explaining a damn thing. So naturally her friend cold cocks him and the sheriff shows up to arrest him. Which brings us to... 

 

The part where our hero gets locked up by the sheriff conveniently with the latest infected person and despite being given an opportunity to show the sheriff that shit just got real he pretty much straight up lets the sheriff get infected (btw at this point it's pretty established that despite a giant squidy thing jumping into your belly the infected people aren't aware they're infected). Oh boy, now the monster's in charge of the police force!

 

A lot of BS "why the hell would they do that?" moments but come on... it's a B Movie.

 

There's a very small amount of comic relief from a big fat reporter guy, a creepy demon slayer dude who despite showing up about 1/3 of the way through the movie doesn't lift a toenail to help anyone, and a very "The End.... or IS IT?" Kind of ending.

 

Good Points:

The acting is OK for a low budget movie considering none of the actors had many credits to their name at the time or since.

Directing, camera work, and editing are also OK considering the same could be said for the crew.

SFX are a LITTLE better than you'd expect for a movie that probably had a budget of about $20 and a handful of lottery scratchers.

I can forgive and overlook a lot in my B movies and I expect very little from them other than to be amused.

Bad Points:

Everything about the good points is just OK. Nothing really blows you away.

R-Rated Movie and no one gets naked. Seriously. One of the hallmarks of B-Movies is that you can get some hot, wannabe famous actress to take her top off but sadly none of them do. Seriously though the R-Rating pretty much comes from the language, violence, and gore- the latter of which there really isn't much of. They proooobably could have cut this down to a PG-13 without losing much. Although at one point this happens:

 

Which probably covered about 90% of the SFX budget...

 



The vulgar actions of the infected were pretty unnecessary and again, once hot chick (who's really not that hot) and hero get infected they just sorta drop that act because I suppose they realized how unappetizing it would be to have our hero farting and belching while he proclaims his love for the female lead. Likewise when the hot (ehhhhhh) chick gets infected she decides to dress slutty and go to a club to seduce a guy so she can infect him. And by the way on that- apparently everyone in this town loves blowjobs because whenever an infected, shambling, bleeding person who can't walk straight or talk comes up to them they immediately assume they're going to get blown.... And that's how the infected gets close enough to spit squidward in to their belly. Right.

So mark that down - hero acts heroic when infected, hot (ehhhhh) chick acts slutty, non-leads burp and fart, and oral sex is really popular in this town.

The movie didn't lag which is a good thing because if it was much longer than the hour and 29 minutes that it is I'm not sure it would have added much to it. The characters are more or less well portrayed, if not fulfilling their very typical movie archetypes, and the story is engaging albeit pretty typical.

Worth a watch for a decently bad movie that somewhat delivers. But don't expect too much.

Two Out Of Five Bad Movie Crusaders.