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Category:    Home > Reviews > Thriller > Population 436 (Thriller)

Population 436

 

Picture: C+     Sound: B-     Extras: C-     Film: C

 

 

Michelle MacLaren’s Population 436 (2006) could have been an interesting twist on the same old story about a dark small town that is happy and bright on the outside, but a deadly cult on the inside who will kill to survive.  After Frank Oz so badly botched the Stepford Wives remake (it and the original are reviewed elsewhere on this site), you figured someone might do it right and having a female director was a chance to do it different.  Unfortunately, Michael Kingston’s screenplay is so bad, dull and lame, she never had a chance.

 

The tale centers on a town called Rockwell Falls, which has had the same population for 100 years.  It takes all that time for the U.S. Government to become suspicious and send someone (Jeremy Sisto) to investigate.  When he gets there, he discovers leaving is not as easy as arriving.  It turns out a cult that is hiding behind born-again Christianity and using “unorthodox” methods (like electrode brain treatments) to take care of anyone who gets in their way.

 

Unfortunately, the characters are so cardboard that you’ll be bored watching them and this would actually seem anti-Christian if it was actually effective.  Instead of expressing some anxiety or fear of the extreme Religious Right, it backfires and reminds us that movie clichés can be as mind-numbing as any politically extreme ideology.  Rocker Fred Durst also stars as a police officer, but he would have been better off hanging at the Playboy Mansion or cutting a new album!

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is soft and intentionally downplays colors, with the lack of detail only outdone by some bad digital effects and montage segments that are just plain lame.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is fair, but nothing too impressive.  The only extra is an alternate ending that also does not work, but does not look as dumb as the one they settled on.  No wonder the population stayed the same!

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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