Director: Michelle MacLaren
Writer: Michael Kingston
Stars: David Ames, Leigh Enns, Susan Kelso
Run Time: 1 Hour, 32 Minutes
Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/39jnHuZ
Synopsis
We begin with a scene of a woman giving birth alternating with a high-speed police chase. The cars are leaving Rockwell Falls, population 436. The truck rolls off the road and explodes just as the new baby is born back in town. Credits roll.
Steve Kady gets lost on the way, but no one will give him directions to Rockwell Falls. Eventually, he arrives, and ends up with two flat tires. The police are hesitant to help him until he mentions he’s with the US Census Bureau. He talks to the mayor and sheriff, and they’re very accommodating. Kady expects his business there will only take a day or two.
One of the farmer’s wife gets really sick, and the doctor states that “this is no accident.” The town has a ton meeting that evening, and the mayor states that they’ve found a place for Kady to stay “until we find something more permanent. If you haven’t done so already, remember to stop your clocks.”
By the next morning, everyone in town knows Kady’s name, and they all seem very welcoming. People keep asking if he’s married or has a family. The man with the sick wife pulls a gun on Kady and mentions the prophecy, but the deputy intervenes. The deputy mentions that there’s never been a murder in Rockwell Falls.
Kady goes to see Dr. Greaver, the town doctor. The doctor’s medical license was from 1948. There’s a girl named Amanda being held prisoner in the upstairs widow. The sheriff says the girl has paranoid schizophrenia and that the doctor’s family have been treating the town for a hundred years. He overhears the kids at school doing.a weird chant. That night, Kady starts having nightmares.
We then get a research montage as Kady reads a book on numerology, checking out what he overheard at the grade school. Not long after, he starts hearing about “the fever” that leaves some people permanently changed. Amanda explains that people are watching Kady, and that he tries to leave, he’ll come down with the fever as well. Her father was the man in the pre-credit sequence.
The sheriff explains that no one ever leaves Rockwell, because God doesn’t allow it. They ask how he’s feeling…
Commentary
It’s a very suspenseful film; you know something is wrong from the very beginning, but you don’t know what or why things are the way they are.
Still, through most of the film, the town looks like an idyllic place to live, and there doesn’t seem to be any real reason to leave. It takes a little over an hour before things start to really go off the rails.