Friday, April 18, 2008

Day 18: Population 436

I wonder who writes the little description of the movie on the sleeve at Netflix. Cause they sure have a way for words. They call this movie "a disturbing drama", which if you sit down and think about it, is just a long drawn out way of saying "horror". If I wasn't already 18 days into this, I would go back and call this "30 Days of Disturbing Drama" and wait for the flood of "WTF" emails that's surely to follow.

There's this town in this movie that's like a murderous Mayberry (hell Mayberry might already be murderous, whos to say that Aunt Bee didn't run some kind of illegal "Hostel" type place) and it's up to crack U.S Census Taker Steve to figure out just what in the holy fuck is going on!

See, since the founding of the town way back in the 1800's, the towns population has always stayed at 436 and Steve needs to figure out the how and the why. After much boring investigating full of weird ass townspeople and a creepy vibe since he stepped into town, he comes across a weird numerology thing where if the number is any different then 436 God will get pissed and smite thee or something. So if anybody wonders in and stays just one night, they have to kill a long time resident to make room for said person and force him to stay into town! And if they try to leave, the doctors declare that they have "the fever", which a quick lobotomy will patch it right up.

So Steve is like "Fuck no, I'm not staying here!" and he tries his damndest to get out. He even gets to burn down a building, which made me excited cause something other then creepy acting was happening. Steve tries to escape with a little girl who "has the fever" and a hot chick that he got to fuck one night, but the doctor got to the hot chick so she has to stay.

Steve and little girl manage to escape finally and-

There are two endings, the one tacked on to the film and the alternate ending that's an extra on the DVD.

The tacked on ending:
-Steve and little girl thoughout the movie has been having these nightmares where they see a cross on a rear view mirror, then some little monkey toy, and finally, a semi crashes into them. Well while driving away through town, a cross magically appears on the mirror (I swear to you guys, it just magically appears), the toy shows up out of nowhere, and finally, the truck hits Steve and Little Girl. Back to outside of town and some other dude that use to work with Steve is now trapped into town and we see the burnt truck Steve and Little Girl was riding in go past, as the Sheriff welcome their new town member.

The Alternate Ending:
-Every single thing I wrote up there, except Steve swerves at the last minute and they're ok. We even see the cop talk to Steve's old friend as he welcomes him into town.

I'm a bit torn cause usually "disturbing dramas" have pretty depressing endings with the hero not making it out or whatever, but I found it quite uplifting that someone finally broke the "curse" of being able to leave town and have nothing happen to them.

Then again, when I was watching the alternate ending, they kept in the shot of the tow truck towing the burnt truck Steve was in, so maybe they didn't make it after all? I dunno.

Ok, so I was saving this bit for last. Guess who has a co-star credit in this movie? You'll never guess.

FRED DURST! And he plays a deputy! Who's the best shooter in town! WTF??? This right here is what made me want to see this movie. I'm not sure if Fred appeared in any other movies, but this one...well, he should stick to singing about failed past relationships he was in. He even had a scene where he cried and I kept thinking that maybe he was thinking about whichever chick he was talking about in "Nookie" that broke his heart so much that she took that cookie and stuck it up her-YEAH!

So Fred Durst co-starring as a cop aside, this movie did have a creepy vibe the whole time, so I gotta give it some credit for making me totally uncomfortable, which I'm sure puts us in the movie since Steve was feeling uncomfortable too. The movie got even weirder when we met a family literally locked in a jail cell at the doctor's house who think it's still the 1950's and they're happy to stay like that. The weirdest thing ever was when Steve and Hot Chick was gettin' it on and Fred Durst was there watching. I never wanna look up while I'm getting it on and see Fred Durst just watching me.

Ugh, I got the jibblies now.

-Jason

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