Powerful

People are voting emotionally.

best movie i've ever seen.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Whatever happened to Heather Magee, the actress who played Marylin? This was the end of a very short career. I always get curious when someone drops out of site after a couple of movies.She was part of a bank robbery team, and someone you immediately want to get away from. There is a lot going on in the movie. The robbers are soon halved, and there is a masked man lurking in the shadows. The suspense is palpable. If you have seen the first part of what is supposed to be a trilogy (Bereavement, which was done six years after this), then you will know who the masked man is.The bank robbery soon becomes a back story as the masked man had captured or killed everyone. It now becomes a typical 80s slasher film.In that light it was pretty good. Had me jumping a couple of times.

The slasher genre is filled with clichés and the viewer is often left longing for something new. However, if you can make a horror film that makes up for clichés with genuine fear and dread, audiences will enjoy it. Stevan Mena's 2004 film "Malevolence" is a stand-out among the disreputable rip-offs. It's not without its flaws, but for a low budget film that got the direct-to-DVD treatment, it's much better than one would think. And much more creepy, as well.The plot is fairly simple: after four people rob a town bank and take a mother and daughter hostage, they hide out in a deserted, lifeless house, hoping to figure out how they will handle the money. What they don't know is that a few houses down, a killer is hiding out, and has set his eye on his new targets.Stevan Mena has an obvious love for the more classic horror films of the 70's/early 80's, when such movies as "Halloween," "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and "Friday the 13th" came out. And with that, a low budget, a nifty choice of a photographer, and some eerie music(by Mena himself, who also edited and produced the film, and wrote the script), "Malevolence" scores big on the genre scale.The setting of a little town that is right next to a slaughterhouse sets the tone for a "Texas Chainsaw" style horror film. The film is a lot like Tobe Hooper's film in that it is brutal, but not in the way "Hostel" was brutal. Actually, most of the violence is quite minimal. Mena favors tension and atmosphere over splashes of movie blood.The film's tone is also a highlight. Nothing is particularly fun about "Malevolence," and neither was "Texas Chainsaw." Right from the start, the mood is heavy, and we're in for a frightening ride.Lighting is also key to the horrific experience that "Malevolence" offers. The film mostly takes place at night, and instead of staying in pitch blackness, the movie's moon sends a glowing ray of light onto the scenery, bringing more atmosphere to the film.Mena has crafted an excellent, foreboding score that is not overly used. There are moments when the music will instantly echo John Carpenter's score for "Halloween," and I love that. The music is original and disturbing. More points for Mena.Now, here's where "Malevolence" is flawed. There's only one quirk that can be found here, and that is in the casting. The acting is decent, but nothing particularly special. In such instances of danger or horror, the cast delivers the screams and the struggle for survival. But when it comes to the more dramatic situations, mostly involving the robbery, the cast can be slightly wooden.Otherwise, there's really not much wrong with this film. It is malevolent enough and made well enough to get a good recommendation, and for a film that went straight to DVD, that's rare. For Stevan Mena, "Malevolence" is a very good first impression. It doesn't beg for attention, but it definitely deserves it.

There's nothing original in MALEVOLENCE. That's not very bad in and of itself. But slavish devotion to convention- somebody must say this, someone else must do that, this must happen- bogs it down and there's a terrible stumble at the end that almost lets the air out of the whole project.Before the main titles we see a boy and girl being held captive in a basement some ten years before the main action begins. The boy sees a hooded figure kill the girl. Close up on his face watching the action. Hey, do you think we might see him again? In the present day we meet four very unpleasant characters who are going to rob a bank. Naturally one gets shot. The getaway car has a flat tire.Cut to a mother and her young daughter Courtney at a baseball game. They stop to buy ice cream and meet up with one of the robbers, who kidnaps them and takes the car with mother and daughter as hostages.Soon we're at the hideout, an abandoned farmhouse conveniently close to the torture house we visited before the opening titles.The little girl escapes, and the things you'd expect to happen do so. The characters you expect to die, die; the characters you expect to live, live.What's good about this is that it's wonderfully visualized. The night scenes are dark and grain free, and there's a great musical score. Yes, it's a synthesizer. But it and the camera-work are the best things about the film.Spoilers ahead. Be warned.This doesn't have the standard three act structure. There's the opener ten years ago. The main action starts one afternoon, the bulk of it takes place that night, and there's a really awkward coda at the end.Of all the characters, Mary is the most irritating. She talks her boyfriend into participating in the robbers with her brother and one of his buddies. She's manipulative and bossy. Imagine Lucy from Peanuts speaking with occasional foul language. Ideally she'd be one of the last to die. Instead, she's skewered about halfway through the film.Both mother and daughter get to knock out the hooded maniac pursuing them. You'd think that in that situation they'd take whatever object was at hand and completely smash his head in and kneecap him for good measure. No. They're good people, but the director can't let them end the story that soon.At the end the mother and daughter are rescued by the police. The last surviving bank robber, who has turned out to be a better man than we thought by helping the kidnap victims, walks out the front door holding a gun and falls in a hail of bullets. Irony! Then the sheriff and an FBI man talk. And talk. And talk. New characters are introduced in the last ten minutes, after the main story has finished. Not a good idea.The last new character introduced wears a suit and tie, so we know he's an authority figure. He reads aloud from the journals of the first maniac to let us know that the boy we saw in the opening grew up and got very strong and killed maniac # 1 and took his place as maniac #2 continuing the string of kidnappings and murder.So for an hour the director mainly follows the rule of show, don't tell, then violates that rule like mad.Finally we see the mother and daughter back in their own home. The phone rings. It's the FBI. Oh, and they casually mention that they still haven't found the $450,000 from the robbery. Hey, there's a gym bag in the house that has the money in it. Irony, man, more irony.Mom falls asleep and has a bad dream. She wakes up, she and her daughter are fine, they can get a good night's sleep. As they are drifting off we see a door open behind them.Nope. It's been clearly established that there's no supernatural element at work here. Maniac # 1 was killed by # 2. And #2 was killed by lead poisoning- bullets. They work very effectively on flesh and blood. Both killers are dead, as are all four bank robber/kidnappers.So why did the door open? It's the rules- you've got to leave room for a sequel. Although it's been done literally hundreds of time, someone behind the camera thought this would be a 'surprise' ending. No. Because the camera continued rolling, we knew that something would be coming up.There's a sequel coming. I wish the creative forces the very best of luck on it.

A bank robbery goes awry for the four who committed it, three of them meeting at an abandoned farmhouse planning to distribute the loot equally. Julian(R Brandon Johnson)is convinced by his girlfriend, Marylin(Heather Magee)to assist her recently paroled ex-con brother Max(Keith Chambers)and his colleague Kurt(Richard Glover)in a robbery so that he could pay off debts to loan sharks. Max in gut shot, as Julian and Marylin drive in hysterics to a farmhouse in the middle of a rural location. Kurt is in another car, with the loot, when his tire flattens. In desperation he confiscates the van of a woman, Samantha(Samantha Dark), kidnapping her and her daughter, Courtney(Courtney Bertolone). Arriving at the farmhouse first, he momentarily binds the females, but Courtney frees herself. This is when Kurt follows her to an old meat / poultry slaughterhouse, closed down in the 70's. This is where we discover that a killer is in the midst. Once they bury Max, Julian and Marylin are in for a rude awakening, as Kurt is nowhere to be found, only a bound Samantha wanting to find her daughter.Slasher flick with not one original idea. Just a series of story elements derived from a variety of sources, from the killer's look(..sack over head, taken from Kurt, reminding us of Jason Voorhies from Friday the 13th Part 2), to the musical score which has plenty of Carpenter's Halloween in how it sounds. Ed Gein's back story is used for the killer's background as is Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There's really not a lot of plot, with most of the movie over by the half-way point due to such a limited set of characters. I mean, Max is dead within fifteen or so minutes and Kurt doesn't last much longer. That's kind of disappointing since the film's villains decrease a bit too quickly with only the boring psychopath remaining to lurk in the shadows, in the distance, with plenty of creaking doors and characters moving throughout areas looking for what caused a noise. Julian is established as a rather likable young man who got caught up in a situation due to a number of mistakes, including being influenced by Marilyn, so he's not much of a threat. And, Marylin, although she barks orders, isn't that imposing as a villain, either. Then you have this long-winded finale after the big chase scene where the remaining survivors attempt to flee their pursuer, and we get to understand what caused the killer to act the way he does, which hearkens us back to Hitchcock's Psycho. Good rural locations and ominous decaying buildings for the killer to hide are one of the movie's lone assets. The cast is merely adequate. Not much worthy in recommending to slasher fans since there's no real visceral(..the violence is cut away from, the knife never shown being buried into the bodies of his victims) or cheap thrills(..only two women important to the plot and neither is really a floozy or a character normally expected to undress) present.