WakenPayne While traveling to Rockwell Falls in an assignment of the US Census Bureau, the surveyor from Chicago Steve Kady has two flat tires nearby the small town. The local Deputy Bobby Caine brings him to the town and the Mayor Grateman lodges him in a farm, where the gorgeous Courtney Lovett lives with her mother. Steve finds that Rockwell Falls, considered by the locals as the most perfect place on Earth, has the same population since 1860 and sooner he discloses the meaning and the dark secret of their creed of solidarity and steadfastness. Now I Really Think This Movie Was Horrible Because It Was Too Far Fetched The Whole 436 Suits God I Mean I Respect All Religions As I Have So Oftenly Claimed But That Is Utterly Ridiculos.Out Of The 3 Things I Look For In Movies This Only Succeeded Partially In All Of Them & They Are Dialogue, Acting & Character Development; For The Character Development It Was All For Charlotte Sullivan Who For Some Reason In Her First Scene I Mistook Her For Jennifer Connely...I Know Weird, The Dialogue Was Good Because During A Channel Flick Night I Came Across Another Christianity Horror & It Used Dialogue From A Grandfather Who Was Also A Killer "Did You Think You Could Escape The Love Of Our Lord Jesus Christ?" I AM NOT PULLING YOUR LEG! So If There Was Any Shitfilled Dialogue In This Movie I Was Immune, For Acting Some Of The Actors Were Believable I Forget Which Ones But They Were There.This Is Not My Sort Of Horror Movie But If Anyone Has Nothing Else To Watch Then I Suggest To Go Ahead.

MBunge Rod Serling really ruined it for the makers of Population 436, and the folks who make a lot of these kind of sci-fi/fantasy scary movies. He set the bar for this sort of storytelling so high that most filmmakers can't reach it, and they end up making movies that are nothing but pale, lame and bloated imitations of Twilight Zone episodes.This film is the story of Steve Kady (Jeremy Sisto), who works for the U.S. Census Bureau. He's been sent to investigate an apparent discrepancy in the town of Rockwell Falls. It seems the town's population is always reported as 436, every year, year after year, decade after decade. After getting the cold shoulder from some locals on how to get to Rockwell Falls, Steve finally finds the town and promptly blows out two of his tires on a huge crater in the road. Deputy Bobby Caine (Fred Durst) shows up and somewhat reluctantly gives Steve a lift into town.It's almost immediately apparent to Steve (and anyone watching this movie) that there's something not-quite-right about Rockwell Falls, but he (and the audience) basically spins his wheels until the filmmakers finally get around to revealing the truth. They kill time by setting up a ham-handed love triangle between Steve, Deputy Caine and local girl Courtney (Charlotte Sullivan), Steve becoming concerned with a little girl named Amanda (Reva Timbers), and a lot of references to "the fever", "equilibrium" and "the union of the divine".After waiting long enough to stretch the story out to feature length, the filmmakers finally unveil the secret of Rockwell Falls, a secret you'll be able to figure out within the first 5 minutes of the movie if you think about it. It seems that God demands the town have only 436 residents. If a baby is born, someone has to die. If someone comes to town and stays overnight, someone has to die. And if anyone tries to leave, electroshock and lobotomies are used to stop them. Steve, Courtney and Amanda all want out, and the rest of the movie is about how and if they make it.This isn't a bad idea for a story, but Rod Serling had a bunch of these ideas and you can't help but notice that the folks who made Population 436 didn't do anything more with their idea in 92 minutes than Serling did in less than half an hour on The Twilight Zone. Writer Michael Kingston did nothing to work out or explore the practical, realistic implications of their idea. The problem with that is, they're not as good as Serling and they're trying to tell a story that's over 3 times longer than one of his shows. The result is a simplistic, shallow and predictable film where long stretches go by without anything happening.Director Michelle MacLaren does a professional but rudimentary job. Nothing looks that bad but her work closely resembles a student film with really good production values. Jeremy Sisto does an adequate job in a pretty generic role and Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst doesn't completely embarrass himself with his acting, but no one else in the cast is at all noteworthy.One of the things I don't understand about this movie is why it's so restrained and relatively clean cut. It is rated R, but there's very little violence or gore and the only sex scene includes just a few, furtive glances at a nipple for nudity. Cut a couple of minutes out of this film and you could practically show it on the Disney Channel. If the movie were smarter and the filmmakers were better, that wouldn't matter. But the movie isn't at all smart, the filmmakers aren't that good and in those circumstances, it's generally a good idea to pack in as much killing, dismemberment and naked bodies as you can. If nothing else, there's always an audience for that stuff.Population 436 isn't an awful film. It's more than a little boring and is barely mediocre even at its best. If the filmmakers had realized that, they might have been able to juice it up enough to make it worth watching. They apparently thought they made a much better film than they actually did, so they ended up with something worse than they could have.

Rathko 'Population 436' tells the story of a Federal census taker visiting the small, rural community of Rockwell Falls to investigate the cause of its never-changing population. Featuring a citizenry of grinning simpletons practicing strange religious rights to protect their way of life, the movie is part 'The Wicker Man', part 'The Stepford Wives'. It comes as no surprise to find that director Michelle Maxwell MacLaren was a producer on 'The X-Files'—the film plays like an extended TV episode with a central mystery that could very well have been investigated by Mulder and Scully. Except it would have been better written and directed. 'Population 436' is pretty dull, made-for-television fare, largely devoid of any real drama or suspense and containing nothing to warrant its R-rating. The most shocking thing about it is the revelation that Fred Durst can act.

sunznc We've seen similar films before. Single person traveling alone ends up in small community where news travels fast of the new stranger. Townfolk watching in a conspirational manner. Everyone acting as though their town is the very best place to live. This film is a variation of that theme so it feels somewhat familiar. The acting is good and even though we may be able to figure out what is going to happen this is an effective little film. It's just enough tension to keep you interested and rooting for the hero. It is a bit disturbing to think about what is happening with some of the locals but not too gruesome or horrible. I would say the weakest part is probably the editing or how some scenes end rather abruptly.