Malevolence begins with a grisly scene of a captured woman being
murdered by a serial killer in the dingy basement of a house. Yet what makes
this scene even more unnerving is that the killer forces a young boy to watch
him kill the girl. We then jump ahead ten years, where a gang of thieves are
busy planning a hold up of a bank. One member of the gang, Julian (Brandon
Johnson) has some serious qualms about pulling off a bank heist. Yet his
girlfriend Marylin (Heather Magee) is all for it. They have bills to pay--specifically,
they owe money to some nasty people, and the cash from the bank
job will pay off their loan plus the interest, with some left over for them to
start a new life. Marylin's brother Max (Keith Chambers), who's a former jailbird, is setting up
the heist with his buddy Kurt (Richard Glover), and she has complete faith in her brother.
When they pull off the bank job, they get the money, but Max also gets a bullet.
There was an extra security guard on duty that all of the preplanning didn't
take into account. Kurt takes off with the money in his own car, while Julian,
Marylin and a severely wounded Max also drive off with plans to meet at an
abandoned house in a desolate rural area. After Max dies of his wounds, Julian
and Marylin bury him in a field. Kurt has his own mishap when a tire blows out
on his car. He carjacks a minivan that's parked at a gas station, abducting its
owner Samantha (Samantha Dark) and her young daughter Courtney (Courtney Bertolone)
in the process. He takes them to the abandoned house and holds them hostage
while he waits for the others to arrive. When Courtney manages to make an escape,
Kurt runs after her, only to run into the owner of the run-down property, who
welcomes all of his unexpected visitors in an extremely violent and grisly manner.
Superbly executed on a shoestring budget, Malevolence is a tense, riveting
thriller with an unrelenting pace that never lets up. By having the first third
of the film be a taut bank heist, it smartly avoids the usual horror film clichés,
with dopey victims-to-be stumbling into the serial killer's lair. Writer/director
Stevan Mena instead offers us an interesting twist where we see a group of
criminals who are predators themselves become the serial killer's prey. Their
motivation for going to this creepy house in the middle of nowhere is greed,
plain and simple. And caught in the middle of this madness are a mother and her
daughter, the only
truly sympathetic people in the film, who seemingly don't stand a chance with either
the bank robber or the killer.
The cast is excellent, as is the 35mm photography by cinematographer
Tsuyoshi Kimoto, who gives the film a far richer look than its budget could allow.
One drawback is that the film suffers from the usual slasher movie-type
ending, which doesn't know when to bring the story to a proper end by throwing
one last scare at us after another. Still, this is just a nitpick in an otherwise enjoyable flick.
The DVD is loaded with special features, including an audio commentary by
director Mena and Associate producer Eddie Akmal, deleted scenes and outtakes (some of which are funny); rehearsal
footage of the actors, and an absorbing half hour documentary about the making
of the film entitled "Back To The Slaughterhouse". This documentary effectively
shows just how low budget the film actually was, and the stamina of the cast and
crew to overcome a number of overwhelming obstacles in order to get Malevolence
made. Here's hoping they make a sequel.
--SF
Main Review Page | Horror Page |Email Me |Buy This DVD Right Here!
