| The Plague | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Hal Masonberg |
| Written by | Hal Masonberg Teal Minton |
| Starring | James Van Der Beek Ivana Milicevic |
| Release date(s) | 2006 |
| Running time | 88 min. |
| Country | U.S.A. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The Plague (also known as Clive Barker's The Plague) is a 2006 horror film directed by Hal Masonberg and written by Hal Masonberg and Teal Minton; it was also co-produced by Clive Barker. The Region 1 DVD was released September 5, 2006. In addition to this release, there is also an unreleased cut of the film known as The Plague: Writer's & Director's Cut.
Plot
Simultaneously one day all of the world's children under the age of nine fall into a catatonic state. For the next ten years, every child who is born, is born in a state of catatonia. After ten years, all the children wake up, hellbent on killing all adults. Things get even worse when the adults realize the children have a sort of collective brain—what one learns, they all learn. As the children get smarter by the hour, first they take out all the engines in every car to stop the adults from escape. Then they learn how to use guns and other firearms. The adults must find a way to stop them before it's too late. In the end Jean Raynor is the only one left alive, somehow she figures out that the children react to how the adults behave. The story is somewhat similar to the 1960 British film Village of the Damned. A prominent recurring image in the film is a dogeared copy of John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath. The plot of the film adopts ideas and structure from Steinbeck's novel, beginning with the release of Sam Raynor from prison, returning to a home immersed in intolerable misery, stumbling from disaster to disaster, and culminating in a kind of hope for redemption that may some day compensate for the horror that has gone before.
Cast
- James Van Der Beek as Tom Russel
- Ivana Milicevic as Jean Raynor
- Brad Hunt as Sam Raynor
- Joshua Close as Kip
- Brittany Scobie as Claire
- Bradley Sawatzky as Nathan Burgandy
- John P. Connolly as Sheriff Cal Stewart
- Dee Wallace-Stone as Nora
- John Ted Wynne as Dr. Jenkins
- Arne McPherson as David
