Evilenko

A few years ago, I saw "Citizen X". I vaguely remembered this great film and the horrifying story it was about when my attention was drawn to "Evilenko, the real citizen X" in the videostore. It turned out to be a big disappointment. The description on the DVD-cover is more exciting than the film itself. The story jumps randomly forward in time, leaving a lot of questions unanswered, never really grabbing one's attention. The murderer gets a lot of screen time in the first 20 minutes, so you feel like seeing events from his perspective. Clearly, he's a freak, but more in a pathetic than a horrifying manner. His ability to "hypnotise" his victims comes out of the blue near the end of the film and made no sense to me. A lot of could-be-interesting supporting characters don't get enough time to evolve beyond flat-characters.

Watch Citizen X instead of Evilenko.

Evilenko is one of those rare moments in the history of cinema, where a (nearly) perfect mix of elegance and perversion succeeds in producing an alarming portrait of the world in which we live. Acting, screenplay, direction, music and scenes, all contribute to create a realistic, dark atmosphere of decadence and inner horror. The story tells this is somewhere in Russia during the Gorbacev era. But we can locate it everywhere - everywhere there is a school, and there is a hierarchy ready to cover even the worse crimes. Malcom McDowell creates one of the most credible, disgusting and disturbing monsters ever seen on screen. Not fascinating as Hannibal Lecter, his clear character alteration is not enough to be aware of his pernicious attitude. This is the first movie of Grieco: not bad as a debut! The movie has not been really distributed in Italy, and I see the average score in IMDb is very low. I understand this is not the usual investigation movie, so it's hard to be accepted. However, I found it to be an important movie, if not really a milestone.

In 1995, HBO produced a film called Citizen X which detailed the murder rampage of Andrei Chikatilo, who killed over 50 women and children.

Evilenko is a fictional representation of this serial murder spree which occurred in the Soviet Union during the fall of same in the late 1980's.

In every way, this version is weaker than Citizen X. The acting is inferior. Donald Sutherland, Max Von Sydow and Stephen Rea are exceptional whereas Malcolm McDowell is his usual overacting self and is not credible as the murderer.

The greatest weakness is an almost laughable explanation of how Evilenko seduced his victims. David Grieco, the writer and director, wants us to believe that Evilenko hypnotized his victims by staring at them.

Don't rent this. Instead, see Citizen X; a vastly superior movie in which the killer, using the actual name of the killer, Chikatilo, is played by the fabulous Jeffrey DeMunn with spine chilling conviction.

Well let's face it. This is in fact a great film. Malcolm Mcdowell is truly amazing. It is a sad film and not the slasher flick that I was expecting. MM is a fantastic actor. Every moment you see him in this film is quality stuff.

The story is quite unsettling and that might be a good thing? Many movies these days have nothing special about them at all! This film has some great acting, great cinematography and many uneasy moments. Not too bad at all.

Watch it - it's not a waste of time. Some movies are. I am looking forward to searching out other MM films (yes I know he did Clockwork Orange). Keep up the good work Malcolm.

Macolm Mcdowell did a great job in this movie as Andrej Romanovic Evilenko. His one of the best actors, but he played only in a few very good movies. In this and in A Clockwork Orange, but that was ages ago. Also Marton Csokas played very good as the police officer. Do not think this movie wasn't good, due to the bad reviews. Watch this movie yourself and you'll see it's very good. There are now like 160 votes on this movie because nobody knows it. IT IS as good as citizen X, Very different story, and a much better plot. The director, David Grieco, did a great job in working out the characters. You know more about the killer and about the police men, then in citizen X. Go to see this movie and you really enjoy it. 8/10