Scourge (2008)

Director: Jonas quastel

Cast: Russell Ferrier, Robyn Ledoux, Nic Rhind

Synopsis: An ancient pestilence called The Scourge is set free in a small town after being entombed in a church’s masonry for a century and a half.

With its parasitic monster giving its victims a major case of the munchies, it’s not difficult to see where writer/director Jonas Quastel found the influences for his low-budget Canadian horror B-movie. It’s Alien meets Slither, and while Scourge is inferior to both of those movies, it does manage a couple of half-decent set pieces. The film’s hero is Scott (Nic Rhind), a clean-cut bad boy who returns to his small home town just as fire destroys a local church. A curious fireman peering into the basement of the burnt-out ruins of the church finds himself becoming the reluctant host to an ancient tentacled monster which has been released by the fire. Apparently having no memory of this traumatic bodily invasion, he heads back to the fire station and begins eating his way through any dairy produce he finds in the fridge.

The parasite needs to transfer from one host to another every few hours until it has occupied nine bodies, upon which it will be able to pro-create. As more people fall victim to the parasite, Scott and Jesse (Robyn Ledoux) his former childhood friend and soon-to-be love interest, are the only ones to realise what’s going on, but they face the usual scepticism from the local police chief (Russ Ferrier), who also happens to be Jesse’s uncle, and must fight the threat to their town alone.

Although the CGI monster in Scourge is reasonably decent, it’s obvious that the movie’s budget didn’t stretch to too many effects of this quality. For example, although we see the monster emerging from its host mouth as it prepares to move home, we don’t see it drilling into its new victim, and somehow it manages to repair any damage it might have done to its new host after boring a hole through their belly button to gain entry. This isn’t enough to fatally spoil the movie, however, and although the standard of acting isn’t great it is just about good enough to pass muster. Scourge isn’t a good movie, even though it has a couple of good moments, but it’s probably as good as you can expect from a cheaply produced B-movie.

(Reviewed 4th September 2015)