Population 436

Year: 2006

Grade: C

Country: Canada

Director: MacLaren

Review

SCREENED AT SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST FILM FESTIVAL, WORLD PREMIERE

horror film about a census worker who visits a town to understand why the population has been 436 for the last 50+ years. stars jeremy sisto and fred durst (yeah, really). really, it’s a cross between the village, shirley jackson’s short story “the lottery,” the twilight zone, and wicker man. lookwise the film is nice, but too clean for the application. to me it looked almost like a cable movie. perhaps because of the sets, or the computer generated props (the potholes or the bird’s eye view of the town, for example), or the colors, i don’t know. that said, there were some nice uses of deep focus and wide angle lenses.

the film doesn’t work very well primarily because it’s too derivative of previous works and because the forced love story isn’t developed in any meaningful way. characters looking at each other softly doesn’t constitute affection or attraction or love in a realistic or meaningful way at all. as a parable the film works, but not as well as the village or the lottery.

Watched in theater    Watched on TV