I have no idea how I stumbled on this, but I recently found myself slightly stunned at just how interesting – far from perfect, but damned interesting – I found a forgotten TV movie from 2006 – yeah, fifteen years ago – unfortunately called The Plague, or alternatively Clive Barker’s The Plague (though in fairness, Barker seems to have been the producer only, while the film, co-written and directed by Hal Masonberg, doesn’t seem to be based on any of Barker’s published stories).
The premise: All of a sudden, for no discernable reason, every child in the world under the age of nine suddenly and simultaneously drops into a coma. Everywhere. Cut to ten years later, and all those kids, most of them housed in huge institutions, just as suddenly wake up. But they’re not the same. They travel in packs. They kill all adults. And the world, after a decade of waiting, is rapidly falling apart.
It’s a film with a fair amount of problems in terms of story and character, but it’s a damn sight more interesting even if unsuccessful than yet another retread of Night of the Living Dead or 28 Days Later. And the biggest miracle of all is that James Van Der Beek — yeah, Dawson himself — plays the badly damaged dad of one of those kids, and turns in very effective performance.
I have no idea how it got made or how it was so completely lost, but for the big-time zombie aficionados amongst ya … give it a try. It’s available on Amazon Prime, if you’re a member, right here.
