Malevolence (2004) - By Duane L. Martin

Film Reviews: Malevolence (2004) - By Duane L. Martin
Posted on Sunday, May 01, 2005 @ 00:00:00 Mountain Daylight Time by Duane

Malevolence

n 1: wishing evil to others [syn: malignity] [ant: benevolence] 2: the quality of threatening evil [syn: malevolency, malice]

I must say that Malevolence was an appropriate title for this movie, but probably not for the reason writer and director Stevan Mena intended.

Malevolence is the story of four people who rob a bank and then split up to avoid the cops. They're supposed to meet up at this abandoned house out in the middle of nowhere near a place that used to be a slaughterhouse. What could go wrong? Well, frankly...everything. One guy gets shot and dies on the way to the house, and another guy gets a flat and then ends up carjacking a minivan and kidnapping this mother and her daughter who were on their way home from the daughter's softball game.

Now before all this occurs, we're given a back story of how back in 1989, Martin Bristol disappeared while playing on his backyard swing in Minersville, Pennsylvania when he was six years old. Basically, what happened to him is that he was kidnapped by the serial killer in order to be trained as his successor. The boy was made to watch the killer as he killed his victims one after another, eventually leading up to a surprise ending that I won't get into here.

The long and the short of it is, they rob a bank, they get to the house at different times, they meet the serial killer, and people start dying. That's the movie in a nutshell. Sound formulaic? Well in many ways it is, and typically that would mean that the movie would end up being bad or boring, but fortunately it ended up being neither. Now this movie, as most movies do, has it's good points and it's bad points. There's a lot of good things that can be said about it, so I'll cover those first before I get to what was wrong with it.

The nicest thing about this film was that it had an indie look and feel to it, but it had the added bonus that the director of photography was a Japanese guy named Tsuyoshi Kimoto. What's so special about that? Well if you've ever seen a Japanese movie, you know that they have a style of cinematography that tends to be much more visually interesting than their American counterparts, and Tsuyoshi Kimoto's work was a stellar example of that. There are some shots in this film that are extremely creepy, including one shot that was probably one of the coolest I've ever seen. I don't want to spoil it here, but when you see it, you'll know it. It's one of those shots that makes you say, "Daaaammmnnnn!" or "Awww crap!"

The music and sound were all well done, with only one exception that's really not all that important. There was just one sound at a critical moment that was more grating and annoying than it was scary, but fortunately it was quick and only lasted for a second. Other than that, all was great on that front.

The settings are what really made the film stand out. The old abandoned house and the abandoned (or so they though) slaughterhouse were both straight up horror movie material. They looked like something you'd see in a nightmare and really lent themselves to the horror the filmmaker was trying to get across.

But with so much right about this movie, there's one thing that really annoyed me about it, and really kept it from being the great film it could have been, and that's the writing. A great film needs great characters. Unfortunately, this one had characters who collectively wouldn't have enough IQ points to drool on themselves properly.

It all started with the bank robbery. As they're going in, they're putting their halloween masks on as they're walking towards the door, AND they have their guns out while they're doing it. Why is this stupid? Wellt he fact that they're walking down a busy street where everyone can see them walking towards the bank with their guns out and no masks on is pretty stupid if you ask me. Then they come out of the bank and as they're running away past people on the street again, they pull their masks off while they're running. Now for people that don't want to get caught, they sure did everything they could to leave witnesses around.

Next we have the idiot who got the flat on the way to the house. He goes to a gas station and finds this minivan that he thinks is empty. When he gets in, he discovers that there was a girl in the back seat looking for her softball mitt. So what does he do? Does he kick the girl out and steal the minivan like any normal person would do? No! He hops in the back seat with her and waits for the mother to come back and then kidnaps them both and makes her drive them to the house where he then ties them up with duct tape. Just a note about the mother and the daughter too. The mother is hot and has a British accent. The daughter looks nothing like the mother and has no hint of an accent at all.

At some point shortly after they get there, the daughter manages to get her hands free and escapes. The mother however was tied up with duct tape through about two thirds of the movie, and even though she was left alone for extended periods, never managed to get herself free. Now how difficult would it have been to find a sharp corner or something to bust the duct tape on and get her hands free? The daughter didn't seem to have any problem doing it.

Then there's the fact that SEVERAL times they had the serial killer down and knocked out and had every chance in the world to just finish him off and put an end to it. Did they do it? No! They just left him laying there and ran off. Now frankly, I don't care how scared you are. When you got someone trying to kill you and you get them down and knocked out, you kill them. Period. You don't let them get up so they can keep coming after you! That's just stupid.

The long and the short of it is, this was a really good movie on pretty much every technical level, but also one that could have benefitted greatly by allowing the characters to be a little smarter. Had this been the case, there could have been a great game of cat and mouse between them and the serial killer. As it ended up, they were all just pretty much easy prey. I would recommend seeing this movie, but with a little asterisk footnote that you'll probably be sitting there much of the time thinking how stupid the characters are.

The disc itself has a lot of great special features including a behind the scenes featurette, a commentary track, rehearsal footage, deleted scenes, trailers, television and radio spots, a stills gallery, and if you're watching the movie on a computer, you can access the original screenplay as well. The film was released by Anchor Bay (http://www.anchorbayentertainment.com) and is available pretty much anywhere. You can also check out the film's website for trailers, music, news and more at http://www.malevolencemovie.com.