Malevolence and Bereavement

After a botched bank robbery the thieves go to their hideout spot to meet up (a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere) but find that a serial killer is waiting for them.  Sounds pretty cool right?  Well it’s really just a Halloween knock off.

It’s pretty amazing that people still care about Halloween.  I mean I love the movie but to have a Halloween reboot and reboot sequel is quite something.  Now I like Rob Zombie’s films but those weren’t great.  They looked good and had good atmosphere but they fell flat in my opinion.  The Devil’s Rejects was pretty badass though.

The killer in this film is pretty much an exact copy of Michael Myers, he wears a white featureless mask,  a dark blue jumpsuit, kills with a knife, never says a word, can’t be knocked down for long no matter how hard you hit him, disappears at the end and was a troubled child.  I haven’t seen too many rip offs that are this blatant.  But actually the thing is that this isn’t a terrible movie.  It’s shot pretty well most of the time and has a great running time of just over 80 minutes.  But the acting and the dialogue is kind of atrocious.  The director, Stevan Mena, tries to give you some bang for your buck with the deaths but there are a lot of cutaways because he couldn’t afford better special effects or makeup.

But I think that even though this is a Halloween facsimile it’s also pretty original.  It’s a slasher flick without the typical high school/college students drinking and having sex and all of that.  These are bank robbers.  Yeah they’re young but they’re in their thirties or so.  Instead of having different social groups represented like you would usually see they’re more the same group of people except for a mother and her daughter who get kidnapped by the robbers.  I’m not sure if they would hang out together on weekends but you could see that happening.  Another thing is that the killer is killing just because he wants to (well it’s more complicated than that but I don’t want to spoil it for you).  Sure this aspect is similar to Halloween but it’s not incredibly common in horror movies.  There’s usually a motive like in Friday the 13th or I Know What You Did Last Summer. 

But what I think really sets this film apart is that Mena gives us a ton of back story at the end of this thing.  This really works to make it feel like these characters live in a big world.  It’s almost like George Lucas with writing the first three Star Wars episodes at the same time as the second three but shelving the first three and starting the series with the second three.  In the original Star Wars pictures you can tell that there’s more going on than just what you’re immediately looking at.  The dialogue and brief citing of other characters and places makes it feel like the characters occupy an immense and intricate world (I guess “universe” in this case).  It’s not on that level in this movie but still it’s definitely more of an effort than most.  Maybe Mena knew he would be making a prequel to this one day and decided to set it up with the ending of this one.

Which leads us to Bereavement.  Like I just said this film takes place before Malevolence and what’s great to see is that Mena has improved in every area with this follow up.  It’s shot better and there are even more shots of very pretty landscapes, the acting is better, the script is better, the overall story is more interesting, there are more deaths done in different ways and it works on its own.  Malevolence feels like a piece of a story but Bereavement feels like a completed thought.  But to be fair and in full disclosure I actually didn’t see the whole thing of Bereavement.  The fucking power went out at the theater that I saw it in with maybe only five minutes of the film left.  Since I’ve seen Malevolence I know the ending but it’s still very annoying.

Michael Biehn (The Terminator, Aliens) stars as an uncle taking in his brother’s niece because he’s dead.  The niece is Allison played by Alexandra Daddario (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) and she’s a pretty mopey teen.  I mean her folks just died so you can’t totally blame her.  But she tries to adjust to life on a farm and likes to go running a lot.  One day while out for a jog she sees a little boy in an abandoned slaughterhouse and decides to investigate.  Now this is really the only part of the movie that I have a beef with (get it?  Slaughterhouse, beef…whatever).  There’s no reason why she would go find out who this ten year old boy is.  Why would she wander into an abandoned slaughterhouse?  Well as you’ve already guessed she falls into the clutches of the killer and hilarity ensues (well not really, it’s a horror movie).

As stated earlier this is quite an improvement is every way from Malevolence and it’s great that Mena actually used the back story that he gave us at the end of that film.  This is less of a slasher movie though.  It’s more of a torture horror movie like the Hostels or Saws.  But at the same time it’s not gratuitously gruesome like those movies.  The focus is (thankfully) not on Allison or even on uncle Biehn but instead on the killer himself.  We see him do his routine of kidnapping, killing and talking to voices in his head.  That’s much more interesting than wondering how Allison is doing in school, if she’s made any new friends or found a boyfriend yet.  Ok, actually that stuff is in the movie but it’s very brief.  Alright the romance that she cooks up between her and this other guy goes on for a bit but trust me the movie is almost all about the killer.

He worships the voices that he hears and has made several effigies of the thing with a bull skull.  There’s a particularly cool part where he’s yelling at this bull skull that’s hanging on the wall and he gets so mad at it that he takes it down and smashes it to pieces.  But when he’s done he looks up and sees the bull skull still hanging there on the wall.  You can see that he’s very frustrated and he feels like this thing has a hold over him that he can’t escape.  It’s a cool touch that makes you think if we’re looking at the whole movie through his eyes or just certain scenes.  Oh yeah and it also shows how fucked up this guy is.

Now I left out a major part of the plot but that’s because it’ll give away not only the ending to this movie but also the ending to Malevolence.  But I would recommend watching Bereavement first actually.  It’s definitely the better made and more interesting film.  If you like it then go back and check out Malevolence but just don’t expect the same level of quality or even the same kind of movie because even though they’re related they’re very different. 

I’m interested in seeing what Stevan Mena does next because he has a real eye for beautiful photography and if he can keep making improvements with story and use interesting characters in an interesting way then I think this guy could be someone to reckon with.