Malevolence

I've been wanting to check this out since learning that it won Best Feature at the 2003 NYC Horror Film Festival. Now after watching it I'm guessing every other film it was competing against must've REALLY sucked.

Malevolence is in no way a bad film, yet it's just not that good either. The concept of mixing a robbery-gone-wrong story with a slasher film is pretty original, but this only makes it's heavy use of slasher clichés drag it down into mediocrity. What would be perfectly acceptable idiotic behavior from stupid teenagers in a fun slasher film, becomes unbearably frustrating because one would expect more from the unconventional characters portrayed here.

As the film stumbles forward through all the usual "scares" of the genre, I only became more and more frustrated by how a good idea is just thrown out the window in order to fall back on things that have been done to death (and much better) 25 years ago. All this is topped off by a soundtrack that was obviously intended to be "old-school" yet comes off as just really annoying and repetitive.

Still, as far as low-budget indie horror flicks go, Malevolence is decently shot, and while it does bring in a new mix to the formula, it immediately waters it down by simply not doing anything worth-while with it.

Trusting some good reviews here I went ahead and watched Malevolence not expecting anything great but just looking for some entertaining slasher movie. If you add some imagination the very beginning of the movie might be quite intriguing, but once the actual plot develops it just annoys the hell out of you. The acting is miserable, the storyline is so predictable and shallow that there were some parts when I thought well?...maybe it's supposed to seem predictable and there's going to be some cool and unexpected twist now...Uh.Okay. Perhaps now?..No?..So I naively kept expecting and kept being constantly disappointed. Oh, and I must say I did jump out of my seat a few times - but not because I was scared, it was because of the music effects that can give you a serious headache. All in all, could have been an OK movie if it wasn't for pathetically poor acting and a storyline a ten year old kid could write.

No, it's not terribly original.

It is certainly reminiscent of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Friday the 13th, etc. in many ways. Oddly, it also called to mind for me a recent movie: Dead Birds (2004), which also started with a bank robbery where people got shot, and the robbers holed up at an abandoned house they knew about, where they get picked off by evil. Unlike Dead Birds, there's nothing supernatural in the movie apart from the killer's ability to take a licking and keep on ticking, but that's nothing new for a slasher.

The first storyline we are introduced to is that someone has been abducting children and killing them. Years later, a woman watches her daughter playing softball.

We also meet a young couple, and they along with the girl's brother and another man are going to rob a bank of about a half of a million dollars. The boyfriend needs the money to pay off loan sharks (I think), otherwise he wouldn't be in it. They're to meet up at an abandoned house where they will split the money and then split up themselves.

The couple and the brother are in one car, the other man is on his own. His car gets a flat, for which he is evidently unprepared, and he carjacks an SUV, which belongs to the mother and her softball-playing daughter, who are forced to come along with him. The three of them make it to the abandoned house first, and violence erupts.

The weakest part of the movie for me were the musical "stings" when the killer shows up or proves to be missing. They were pretty cheesy, to the point of spoof almost.

While the movie isn't very original, I nevertheless felt it was pretty good, and am surprised at some of the hostility towards this movie by other users. That said, if you're going to watch one bank robbers killed by evil in an abandoned house horror movie from 2004, I think Dead Birds is the more interesting one.

I can't believe that people are trashing this film! If it's not the PG-13 horror film haters, which I'm one of those myself, it's people who expect some much from the little guys. This film wasn't handled by a multi-million dollar studio, it was handled by a true student of horror like, hmm, ourselves, with a little bit of money and an idea. I totally respect Mena for paying homage to films like: "The Town That Dreaded Sundown", "Psycho", and yes "Halloween", but folks give me a break! This film was good, violent, scary and had a storyline, two different plot points to be exact, along with a back story coming soon to theaters. Stay off these guys, they are one of us, one of the little guys who are trying to make Hollywood into what it used to be, to what we dreamed of, not what it has become.

"Malevolence", is a true horror film that everyone should watch! No it's not the best acted film I've ever seen, or the most horrific cinematic experience I've witnessed, but it's a true visceral, surrealistic film, that only the old 70's flicks could approach. Forget the lavishing special effects, with the beefy soundtracks packed with the latest heavy metal hits and hot models turned actresses. If you want to see a true gritty horror film, with big scares, large knives, synthesized effects and a potato bag wearing maniac, rent this puppy, she will deliver, I promise!

This movie's eerie, I'll give it that. But scary? Sadly, no.

A bank robbery goes wrong, the survivors rendezvous at a house, someone evil is in the house. Bank robbery aside, this movie has been done. And done. Many, many times before. I respect the fact that the movie was shot for practically nothing and that it represents a noble attempt to return to those halcyon days in the horror genre when killings were brutal, the production decidedly unpolished and, for the most part, the movie terrifying. But rather than paying homage to films like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Malevolence" adds nothing to them. "Continuing in the tradition of" is very different from "aping."

Ultimately, this movie is more Greek tragedy than horror. Things start off at a turning point for the characters, things fall apart, people die. What the movie's lacking is a real sense of horror. It's awfully hard to be scared when everything happens right on schedule.