Little Evil

The trailer for "Little Evil" was hilarious. Unfortunately, there isn't enough material here to sustain a feature length film. Forty minutes in I found myself looking at my watch ... and I don't even wear a watch. I was hoping for "Zombieland" but alas, I got "Krampus".

If you like the supernatural horror genre and horror/comedy mashups in particular, "Little Evil" is still worth a viewing, not least to catch the abundant allusions to "The Omen," "The Shining," et al. All others should pass this one by.

It was an okay movie, i really like Adam Scott's previous works but this time he didn't get to me. The humour is alright, most of it isn't funny but weird and childish. (the dark humour in this movie is terrible) Bridget Everett is playing as lesbian stepdad ''AL'' and are ''Gary's'' (main person)helping hand in stopping the Antichrist. In most of the scenes ''Al'' is just cringe-worthy. It was kind of a brain-dead movie,no real reason to pay attention to details. But again, the movie was watchable and got a few scenes that will give you a grin.

This film is hilariously entertaining if you recognize the intended allusions, particularly the nods to THE OMEN. Adam Scott and Owen Atlas are charming as step-father and son, especially in the water park scenes. Evangeline Lilly is surprisingly perfect as the ditsy mom; she delivers her lines with impeccable comic timing. I've never seen her outside of LOST and her performance here is spot-on. Yes, some bits are campy and silly, but the overall message is touching and relevant.

The first thing to say is that the first two acts of this movie really struggle to truly find the line between horror and comedy. It tries to find comedy in a normal person reacting to a devil child, but that is pretty much every possession horror ever so there isn't much new ground there, and the attempted comedy often falls flat while also taking away from the potential actual creepiness of the scene. It's easy to rule this out as a failed attempt at recapturing the Tucker and Dale vs. Evil vibe.

But then the third act happens and the movie really comes into its own. The humour and tension are amped up and instead of being a shadow of dozens of horrors and a shadow of dozens of comedy it becomes its own movie and is much better for it. There is even a great message about the difference between nature and nurture and there are some good original ideas that make it much more enjoyable.

Overall it is a shame you have to wait for the third act to get going, especially since they show the catalyst for this momentum shift at the very beginning. You could argue they need the first two acts to set up for the third, but if so then they should have focused more on the comedy since there are way too many evil/possessed child films to care about getting that part right. Still though it's hard not to recommend this movie since the third act is really enjoyable, I just wish they could have gotten there sooner. Maybe just skip to that point.

I'm not going to lie; I was kind of disappointed with this one. I had such high hopes for another Tucker N Dale Vs Evil type horror comedy. It's not a bad film, but the laughs were a little too few and far between for me. It had its moments but just wasn't consistent. I will say there are a few genuinely touching moments though, which I wasn't expecting, so it had that going for it.

Part of me thinks this one might get better upon repeat viewings. I'm not really sure why I feel that way, maybe it's because I wanted to like it more than I did.

Worth a watch, but if you were as excited as I was to see this one, lower your expectations.

My Rating: 5.5/10