Population 436

A film such as Population 436, like many in its genre, is a straight-to-DVD movie. Ocassionally such films make their way there because they are first-time directed low-budget flicks with no distribution company pushing behind it. Most films in this field however make it to the shelves because they are simply bad films and probably did not win over audiences in its screen test. Some are diamonds in the rough and some are so amazingly amateurish it's surprising that they were ever made. Most are just plain bad and unsurprisingly this is the category that Population 436 fits into.

It begins with a journey by a census-taker who is travelling to the small town of Rockwell Falls in order to find out why the population has remained at 436 since the 19th century. It's an original idea granted but I always find if a movie is based in a small town ending in 'Falls' you better hold on to the receipt as you are in posession of damaged goods. My trepidations increased due to the fact that Fred Durst aka Mr Limp Biscuit was acting in this film and on the whole, rock stars do not make for great actors. Interestingly enough his acting is actually one of the best features of the movie as an initial intriguing plot soon gets bogged down into the mundane and obvious horror plot.

As you might imagine, all is not well in Rockwell Falls and the census-taker is viewed with trepidation and treated with disdain. Can our intrepid main character find out the mystery behind the small town before he falls victim to their evil ways? By the end of the movie you probably wont care enough because if you're intelligent you'll see the ending coming a mile off besides numerous other plot points which borrow from the big box of horror plots. Sometimes I think writers use fridge magents to put these scripts together. Your oven deserves to get cleaned above your priority of watching formulaic nonsense like this and whilst I'm a sucker for trashy horror movies but this is certainly the dregs of the barrel that should be avoided.

I would give this film 1.5 Falls from grace out of 5