Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Let's be realistic.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

While this is not going to make any "Best of 2017" lists, its deserves to be seen. The horror spoof genre has been a bit overdone in the past with movies like Scary Movie and all the Friedberg/Seltzer mixed bag of spoofs. However, director Eli Craig knows his way around an homage flick (see Tucker and Dale vs Evil) so I'm not surprised he turned out an entertaining movie again. While DaTvsE was on point almost the entire time, Little Evil meanders a bit and misses out on some great chances to send up the genre. Where the Scary Movie ilk beat you over the head with the spoofs, Little Evil is a bit more suttle, being more homage than spoof. Case in point, the little boy is sitting in front of a TV with white static on it. Its an obvious reference to Poltergeist, but the little boy does not utter the words "they're here" like all of us have done at one time or another. The mere visual was enough.Adam Scott plays Gary, who has just married the perfect girl, Samantha (Evangeline Lily). Samantha has a withdrawn son named Lucas, who might or might not be the anti-Christ. The laughter comes from Gary trying to connect with the kid like any stepfather would, except the kid might be Satan. Along the way Gary is joined by members of a stepfather support group who all pretty one dimensional aside from a lesbian "stepdad" named Al. The other members of the group are recognizable comedians if you follow comedy.The plot doesn't try to be creative, but it flows along nicely and there are plenty of laughs along with some genuine moments of honesty and sincerity. Adam Scott is good at playing the normal guy with a weird streak. Evangeline Lily does the sexy girl-next-door female to perfection and she is good here, too. With a crisp running time of 94 minutes it doesn't feel padded in any way. My only criticism is I think there was some gold that didn't get mined in an attempt to go for the laughs. I think they could have make this a darker comedy about being a stepdad to the anti-christ and it would have been funny AND scary while respecting the source material AND being original in the same manner as Tucker and Dale..

Little Evil is the latest horror comedy by Tucker and Dale vs Evil director Eli Craig. Considering how enjoyable the previous movie was, and seeing that Little Evil was taking a similar route, we figured it was a pretty safe bet. Unfortunately maybe it was just a little too safe.Little Evil plays on the evil child horror trope, complete with callbacks to The Omen, Poltergeist, and even The Shining. Gary has married the beautiful Sam, punching a little bit above his weight, and moved in with her and her child Lucas (Lucas > Lucius > Lucifer, get it?). Unfortunately bonding between Gary and Lucas doesn't go so well, as Lucas starts to show worrying signs of the supernatural and satanic. Turns out Lucas is the antichrist, and Gary is the only one to really notice or care.On the more serious side, Little Evil explores what it's like from a stepfathers point of view, or really father in general. It uses the horror and comedy aspects to play up and emphasise the difficulty some men have relating to their children, blood or otherwise. It spins the idea that stepdads are always the guilty party on it's head, and I found that refreshing. It also plays around with themes of nature vs nurture. Sure Lucas was born the antichrist, but does he have to be? Can he break that and be whoever he wants to be? This last point it hammers home a little sappier and more sentimental than I maybe would've liked, but this is what I mean about the film maybe playing it a little too safe.Little Evil resists any opportunity to break the mould or push the envelope. It sticks inside it's quite safe parameters resulting in being not all that funny and not all that scary. There's virtually no gore at all, and the short glimpses of creepiness we get lack conviction. The humour is fairly run-of-the-mill and suffers from overplaying jokes a little too much. Sam is oblivious to her child's creepy habits for too long, and Al is only really funny because she's a woman pretending to be a man. For a dark comedy, it's not all that dark or controversial either. They're the kind of jokes you'd expect in any mainstream American comedy. That's not to say I didn't like Little Evil though. It is enjoyable, and did earn a number of chuckles from me. Unfortunately I've found it very hard to review because, less than twenty-four hours later, I can barely remember it, and that's not a particularly great sign. It rides on the coattails of Tucker and Dale's success, but never quite hits the same mark. It plays it safe, preventing it from being a bad movie, but also preventing it from reaching the potential the trailer offered. I give it an enjoyable but vanilla 6/10.

A guy moves in with his new fiancé, only to discover that her son from a previous marriage...just might be the antichrist. The boy seems to possess the ability to subconsciously drive people to get into accidents or commit suicide. But, his mother isn't willing to listen to any criticisms about her beloved son.There are all these lame references to other horror films like poltergeist and the shining. But they aren't done very tastefully...or well.In fact, this whole movie is woefully awful...even as a children's movie it's bad.It's incredibly budget. The acting is poor. It's neither funny, nor creepy, on any conceivable level. And there is no nuance to the storyline whatsoever.Seems like Netflix didn't even try on this one...they just spent a few bucks on cameos, and pumped it out as new content- without any f*cks given.Netflix has a terrible horror section. Period.You should probably cancel your subscription every October and use the money to rent some real horror films from a real cinema shop. This move has no redeeming qualities whatsoever...unless, maybe, you are under 10 and have no dad... 1 out of 10.

The current rating seems a little unfair to me. Sure, there's a lot that's soft and undercooked in this flick, but it's not unfunny, and the premise alone, as well as how far it's willing to go with it, should win it some extra points. The flick has enough surprises, laughs, and strong, clear-eyed direction to make it worth a slack night's viewing.Eli Craig's got a knack for making horror/comedy out of big ideas. "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil" is essentially a horror film about bigotry and false perceptions of the other, and here Craig's made a light-hearted, but still relatively rich, riff on the horrors of being a step-father who's trying to connect with an emotionally distant child. All of that is to be commended, and I intend to keep following Craig's output.Still, I get it, the son is essentially a non-character, more like a prop, really; there's zero chemistry between Evangeline Lilly and Adam Scott; and for a movie about relationships, it's pretty lazy when it comes to actually depicting the way people in those relationships act toward's one another. It could have really gone for it, the way "This is the End" went for it, but it didn't, it chose mush over metal in its overall approach, so go in expecting pretty light fare.But honestly, it's better than most of the made for Netflix movies.(Okja is an outlier)