Surviving Evil

Once again, various characters face a mystery the audience is already fully aware of the resolution of, prompting another movie that delivers little suspense or mystery.

The monsters are shapeshifters, capable of transforming into any creature, which in a jungle setting like this would provide excellent paranoia fuel. This gets wasted entirely, however, as animals barely appear on screen with the characters. Incidentally, the monsters rarely use these abilities in attacking their victims anyways.

Obviously it takes more than one actor to contribute anything worthwhile, and Billy Zane can only contribute slightly to a film with nothing else going for it. Even worse the monsters have almost no presence and aside from the times characters find evidence of their existence, it's as if nothing is happening.

I'm a fan of Billy Zane, in fact I'd go as far as to say I'm a big fan of his so it always pains me to see him in movies like this. The man has the acting chops and natural comedic timing so should be gracing our screens in high budget efforts not things like this.

Telling the story of a famous television survivalist and his film crew visiting a Phillipino island full of nasty creatures that funnily enough ruin their shoot.

The movie has little in the way of originality but does certainly have its moments. It's weakness besides the fact we've seen it all before is a dreadful ending which damages the entire film. Not sure if they did that ending because they expected to make a sequel, but that was very naive if the case.

Surviving Evil is a watchable piece with a decent enough cast and surprisingly decent sfx considering its budget but just pretend the film ends five minutes before the end.

The Good:

Billy Zane

Looks the part

The Bad:

Beyond dumb ending

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

The creators had no clue of the weight of gold

The sanscript name for Jungle is Jungala

I'm with you on your review. I didn't understand the ending, it was vague. Did you?

I grew up with the stories of the "Aswang", which is a mythical creature in Philippine folklore. (The Aswang is an inherently evil vampire-like creature and is the subject of a wide variety of myths and stories, the details of which vary greatly.) Knowing this, I was expecting a great deal from the movie.

The opening scene was fairly decent and stoked me up for what should be coming next. Unfortunately, I was sadly disappointed with too much unnecessary dialogue that made the movie a bit of a drag to watch after the first part.

To make a brief enumeration, the story had a lot of potential. I believe they could have made this into a really good horror movie since the concept of the folklore has its own charm.

All the actors had to be given credit for doing a superb job on such an obviously meager script. If they did one thing right, it's picking out the cast in this film.

Now, the background music/sound effects reminded me of Vincent Price for some reason. Which I found a bit funny since the cinematography is like watching something from the 70's. I'm thinking, it's either something deliberate for effect or just a result of having a low budget.

Things pick up, though, near the end. Unfortunately, even then, there wasn't much focus on the Aswangs and their shape-shifting prowess. This could have been precious fodder for making a great horror story and messing with viewer's minds.

Overall, it's not THAT bad, but it's not something I would watch again.

Sure, there was potential for more. There was also plenty to enjoy.

Some thrills, some silly dialogue, some meanies doing mean things, some blood, even some pretty ladies (no nudity).

Some people can't stop pretending they would have done it better long enough to enjoy something.

Grab a friend and a beer, enjoy yourselves.

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I didn't need ten lines to explain that, IMDb.

Sorry.

What else... well the monsters were quite vicious, a good thing I think. I don't like the pansy monsters in some movies. 30 Days of Night was a great movie precisely because the vampires were absolute beasts. Didn't sparkle or nothing.