Malevolence

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!

I just enjoyed this flick. However, having read the other reviews, I'm seriously wondering if viewers may have been on crack or are close friends with the director? Are they serious? No, seriously? I think that the best aspect of the movie is the fact that the director imbued it with so many MAJOR components of 80's B slasher flicks - the really bad synth music, the twisted ankle, the incessant screaming, the double twist ending - but without a hint of irony, which is rather difficult to do I would imagine! The tone is extremely deadpan. If someone had told me I was watching a horror movie made in 1988, I would have completely believed it - and is a very significant statement coming from someone like me by the way. Whether intentional or unintended, the movie works for both thrills and chills. Fun stuff - no second coming like a few other critics declare. An addendum to this story. My good friend left several messages recently for me indicating that she wanted to go to "Male Violence" - yes, several times she told me that we simply must see "Male Violence"? I asked her to spell it for me..."M- A-L-E-V-O-L-E-N-C-E"...."you haven't heard about Male Violence"? So in thanks to this movie I learned that my friend can't spell or really speak...wow.

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.

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.