Let's Be Evil

Jenny (Elizabeth Morris) is struggling with money and caring for her bedridden mother. She gets hired along with Tiggs (Kara Tointon) and Darby (Elliot James Langridge) as chaperons in an underground facility. She is surprised to learn the subjects are little children being trained in a learning program with augmented reality. Everybody has to wear special glasses to see. There is the AI named Arial (Jamie Bernadette) to assist the newcomers. There are no other adults around. The kids communicate through the virtual reality and remains silent except for Cassandra (Isabelle Allen) who befriends Jenny.

The movie is mostly filmed in the first person POV through those augmented reality glasses. As long as there are two or more people in the scene, it can switch back and forth almost like a regular movie. It's not until Jenny is alone that the movie is forced to be a solo camera affair. The camera restrictions and the glasses on everybody do distant the audience from the acting. I don't think the acting is bad but it is constrained. On the other hand, there is an opening rant that screams cheesy B-movie. The over-the-top acting there needs to be cut.

One of the problem is that these are kids with no real superpowers. Nobody picks up a weapon, or even a stick. It's obvious the augmented reality could be compromised by the kids from the beginning. This is literally a horror that could be solved by a simple flashlight. It would be more compelling to have the augmented reality forced on them like an injected microchip. I kept thinking they should take off those glasses and light up the situation through another means. There is also a twist that is obvious from the start. It's completely expected and I simply waited for it to happen. The only positive is that the augmented reality looks fine especially if you compare it to the spartan bunker setting.

"The past can define our future. But I won't let it."

The opening scene of this sci-fi horror was promising. Even better, it was a snapshot that instantly caught my attention. A sublime and fascinating scene after which I snuggled in my cozy chair in anticipation for something magnificent. I was immediately convinced that this was going to be a hell of a movie. What did you expect? With a score like that on IMDb, this couldn't go wrong. The frozen image of a puzzled looking girl smeared with blood, seamlessly merged with a TV-show where we get the melancholic picture of a generation with no future. The education system needs to be changed so a new generation of intelligent young kids is being produced instead of a generation of obese and hopeless youngsters . The images looked futuristic with a suitable graphic design. And then the flashy google glass lookalike is introduced. A gadget we'll be watching through the rest of the film.

Just recently I've seen "Jeruzalem" where they used the same kind of glasses. A disappointing film though. The only feat I was excited about was that high-tech device. Unfortunately this facet of "Let's be evil" became a rather annoying element to me. Even worse. I got so sick of it that I wanted to give up already halfway the movie. The rickety soundtrack was perhaps an omen. Admit it. If you want to create a futuristic movie, you shouldn't be using those stale Jean Michelle-Jarre polyphonic sounds. It felt as if I was watching a third-rate SF from the 80s. Unfortunately these weren't the only disturbing elements. When the end credits rolled over the screen I made my final conclusion. This was probably the worst thing I've seen this year.

First, the overall picture you get to see almost the whole movie. The fact that it all happens in a virtual environment (the three selected candidates can only see by making use of the spectacles) was at first an exciting and interesting display. It all looked great and well-known (especially for those who sometimes sit behind a screen to have fun with some PC games), but it has one major drawback. After half an hour of hazy and swirling images, you gradually start to hate it. Biggest advantage is that a not so talented cameraman with virtually no experience gets away with it when some blurry and out of focus fragments appear in between. Combine this with a dark underground bunker where the lighting consists of pulsating lights in all sorts of colors and your irritation level is reached very quickly. It looked as if the whole story was set in a concrete submarine.

And then you have the actors who were recruited based on some unknown requirements and who are participating in the Posterity Project. Judging from the conversations they have, the requirements concerning the level of intelligence needed for this job wasn't very high. Their ultimate function is to observe the group of teenagers that are also present in this underground facility (spending their days waving their hands in the air). And when necessary they accompany a lost teenager back to the group. Not exactly intriguing and exciting. The fact that the group of children organize a sort of artificial uprising afterwards in which they manipulate the electronic system in an incomprehensible way, was the start of a confusing outcome and a ridiculous denouement.

Finally, the part that frustrated me the most. I had no idea what the theme of this movie was about. And in the end, I still didn't know it. Perhaps it's me getting older and a mild version of dementia sneaked in my system, but I couldn't make head nor tail of it. What was the opening sequence about and how did this correlate with the rest of the movie? And the end didn't clarify anything either. In a subtle way they tried to demonstrate the dangers of technologies and the way it's intertwined in our everyday lives. Kind of obvious. But eventually I still had a few questions about the film. Occasionally I like to watch a sophisticated film with a not so simple story line. But this was a level too high for me apparently. I suggest however that the creators of the IMDb website check their algorithms, because the score given to "Let's be Evil" is totally irrational. Or was there an artificial intervention by the makers of this movie? Well, that's a spooky thought!

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Three chaperones are hired to supervise an advanced learning program for gifted children, who wear Augmented Reality Glasses to assist in their education. Contained within a secure, underground facility, events quickly spiral out of control.

The film has received mixed or negative reviews, and I can absolutely see why. Even though the virtual reality parts look okay, the general appearance of the film is cheap. And much of the acting is awful (especially the really bad talking head in the opening). The concept is timely (something we might see on "Black Mirror"), but the film may be limited by its own budget.

Worth a look? Sure. But not nearly as good as the sort of new releases we have come to expect from IFC Midnight. (Then again, you can't have a winner every time, can you?)

This film has the best trailer I've seen in years, a good combination of lights, colors and funky music. Then as a British Horror enthusiast I was thrilled to see it was a British movie.

The praise stops there.

Three actors a mixture of talent, two good females one awful male actor, a warren of tunnels that are probably the same and the worst American accents ever. Everything was American, it was like it was pretending not to be a British movie, but it was.

The story is very "damned" similar, but that's also where that ends.

Unfortunately the story was just too awful, 45 minutes in I just couldn't go on, it was truly unbearable, boring and utterly tiresome. You could have slept through portions and not missed a thing.

So sad it was so bad, it could have been so good.

It bills its self as something of a augmented reality horror movie, getting to to mess with peoples minds.

I'm not sure if the makers of the movie know what augmented reality really is, as its "use" in the movie is more of VR.

The acting is decent but the story line is stretched thin to hit 1:22 running time, at least the version I saw. There's really not much there, only 4 actors on screen have lines, 3 of which you learn no back story and there for have little emotional connection to.

It attempts to be a psychosis horror but anyone who has a few minutes of film training can easily see its a low budget set, in an abandoned building hidden by low light and lots of subtle color.