Creek aka Town Creek aka Blood Creek (2009)Why I never heard of this movie before I have no idea. I mean, you have the occult, Nazis and zombies - no this is not Dod Sno (Dead Snow). It is actually a horror/thriller that has a halfway decent plot, a little thinking power to it, and while of course it's not plausible it was at least engrossing to watch. It was directed by Joel Schumacher who has a lot of movies under his belt, some great 80's flicks and blockbusters (including Val Kilmer's Batman) and yet it was not well received I guess, probably why I've never heard of it. It was re-released to DVD in 2010. And it goes a little something like this:
At first in black and white we see a poor German family named Wollners in West Virginia receiving a letter from Berlin. They are asked to host a Professor who is a scholar, needing a place to 'learn'. Since they are offered $150 per month (in 1936 dollars) they can't help but accept. They quickly learn to regret that decision. This is all based on the constant speculation that Hitler, along with his elite in the Third Reich were heavily into the occult, and believed that otherworldly forces of the Vikings (whom Germans believed they were descended from) would be the key for Germany to rule the world. This has been debated in many a documentary and no conclusive (read real evidence) has been found either way. But for the sake of the movie, they do. And that is what Professor Richard Wirth is up to - using the occult to fulfill Hitler's wishes. See, this family, along with eight other families in the USA (Why the USA? For the movie dummy.) has a Viking runestone they found on their property, something the Nazi's are convinced will help them in their goals.
Fast forward to the present. There are two brothers - Evan and Victor. Evan is a paramedic and spends his time on the job and taking care of his elderly father. His father constantly reminds him how inferior he is to his brother, who served in Iraq, came home, but disappeared on a camping trip they took two years ago. His father keeps telling him it's all his fault - his brother was a hero and deserved a better brother. Great parenting.
The movie's pace starts quick - just that night his brother shows up - hairy, filthy and covered in blood. He tells his brother to get every gun and all the ammo he has and follow him. Evan does this without question while his brother shaves all the hair off and takes a shower. We see blood dripping down the drain as he does. When Evan asks what happened, Victor shows him his back - it is criss-crossed with old and new scars, some still bleeding. He says they need to get the people who did this to him for two years.
They get to the farm and see the family - they have remained unchanged since the 30's. When the daughter turned 17, the whole family just sort of froze in time. Why the Nazi seeking immortality didn't I have no idea, I guess it wouldn't have been a good 'horror' flick if you didn't have a nasty, rotting corpse of a monster in it. But so far, no zombies - unless you count the Nazi.
The daughter, being a bit smarter than the rest of the family, stole some of the Nazi's books and knew how to sort of contain him, at least on the farm. They hold Wirth captive in their cellar and trapped in the farm with blood markings. This prison however requires the family to sporadically capture people and use them as a source for blood. The horrifying fate of the family is then linked to Wirth's, so they keep him alive but weak and trapped.
The family tries to explain what happened but the brothers are there for blood vengeance and don't listen. They manage to loosen Wirth out of the cellar, and he begins a bloodbath. This fight goes on for quite a time, still action packed but kind of repetitive, you just want them to find a solution and get out of there. Animals are killed and brought back as zombies - ick. A prisoner they find and release (only to have him get killed anyway) is brought back, as is the brother and father of the family when they're killed. So we have very little zombie action - they talk, they're aware of what's going on, but they'll still kill you. The Nazi? He can't come in the house because the daughter has painted blood runes all over it - that doesn't seem to bother the zombies though.
Eventually (read takes way too long) the brothers get the story out of the daughter about what might kill this - thing. See, what he's been waiting for is to eat a lot of blood and get a lunar eclipse, in order to awaken a 'third eye' (popular mythology for a lot of things, look it up) and he does. And looks more human (not great, but not rotting). But, conveniently, he had brought the bones of some of his family with him, and his own 'blood' is poison to him. So the younger brother gets his back cut up, they grind some bones and smush it into the wound. When the Nazi 'feeds' on him, he's poisoned - and the two brothers manage to both stab him with another family bone and decapitate him with barbed wire. Gruesome end, but a relief, this went a little long.
At this, the remaining Wollners turn rapidly old and die. Before the youngest dies, she tells Evan about the other eight sent to eight other farms (Why West Virginia?) and tells him where to find the map. While Victor returns home to his family, Evan heads out to the other farms to stop the Nazis, noticing that on the map marking their location, if you draw a line to each one, it makes a Swastika. Okay that was a bit obvious but still a decent movie and I don't know why it wasn't more popular.
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