God really likes Rockwell Falls. And He likes it just the way it is. So much that the human population has to stay directly at 436 at all times. Any deviation to this is not really treated very well, cue the fiery death as Population 436’s introduction which should give you some insight into what an asshole God is, if you’ve not read the Bible and learned firsthand anyway.
Enter Mr. Dickhead from Chicago who’s come to perform a census, poke his nose everywhere and be a general nuisance in this cursed rural American town which is presumably set somewhere in the post-boomer trump-voting midwest. Of course he gets what he deserves: trapped in a terrible group of paranoid cultists whom have no intention of letting him escape to his real life.
Nothing really goes extremely wrong here; the story plods along reasonably, staying safe yet generally holding itself together with a respectable coherance, and ending with a satisfying finale, even if it becomes just as dull and unexciting as the uninteresting town it depicts. For supernatural terror this is about as plain and vanilla on the menu and probably influenced mostly by the excellent 1973 Wicker Man.
There’s so many areas where greater development could have been created. The sense of isolation to be trapped in an alien place is only tentatively explored; the madness of the damned inhabitants has no real insight, and also overlooked is the potential for a discussion of religion, and how it both settles and displaces people. We began with our spirituality as nomads, so could this be connected somehow?
What appealled to me during the course of this forgettable crap was how a town which required to maintain a firmly static population could exist. Every settlement on earth requires its people to involve in some sort of trade or travel. Its plumbing and electricity surely require a fair amount of workers for installation and maintenance.
So it would have been fun to see some ideas about the villagers cheating “God”. First, you’d need to establish the exact parameters of the town. Then, carefully move people outside of them the moment an outsider enters, and return likewise (keeping in mind that this only applies to overnight stays). Some interesting engineering could potentially have been explored. Damn, need to watch Primer again for that fix.
4/10
Possession Media 