Malevolence

I understand a lot of the hate this film gets here, it's derivative and not wildly original. However, I make the argument that, really this was a seriously low budget film that actually did I good job at what it set out to do.

I first saw this film as a kid, and as you might expect, it scared the SHIT out of me! It's very likely that the experience people who were in they're youth when they first saw the texas chainsaw massacre and halloween, was the same I had with this film. The mother/daughter relationship resonated with me and has always had a beep effected for me. And for that this film set out exactly to do what it set out to do. And even now as a young man, I still gravitate back to this movie even with my later exposure to bigger and better horror classics. It is in part very good at what it does and the love for 70s and 80s horror shines though.

I understand it's an homage, I understand what it tries to do, but...if your way to homage some bad acting in old films is just replicating that, you will get...bad acting. The best way to do it would be to put some comic layer to it, but nop, it's just shockingky bad acting, and I'm not surprised that no one from this cast is currently a great actor.

Liked the score and the killer was alright, but the story is totally all over the place and the film is just not that interesting.

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.

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.

A group of bank robbers rendezvous at an old, abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. The crime didn't go exactly as planned, and with one robber dead, and a pair of hostages in tow, the crooks attempt to wait out the night.

What they don't know is that nearby, in a dilapidated slaughterhouse, is someone who is about to pay them a visit. As night falls, the group discovers that any legal troubles they might have, pale in comparison to what they will encounter.

MALEVOLENCE is a throwback to the days of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, HALLOWEEN, and similar films. It has that "Anything could happen to anyone at any time" feel to it. Director Stevan Mena has made an homage to the classics here, adding a crime drama to the bloody mix. Recommended for lovers of the sort of horror / thrillers, that were made before the term "slasher film" was coined...