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Film Review: 'The Evil Down the Street'

The only real evil afoot here is the painful boredom that kills this badly acted possession horror film.

By Trevor WellsPublished 3 years ago 5 min read
4

At first, it seemed the Ryan family lucked out on their recent move. With a beautiful new house in a peaceful neighborhood, it initially appeared to be the perfect place for Michael (Kelton Jones) and his family--consisting of wife Katie (Alena Gerard) and their daughters Kristen and Maddy (Tara Milante and Sophia Sparks). But not long after their arrival, Michael and his children begin to notice odd behaviors from Katie.

The loving and upbeat wife and mother they once knew is now replaced with a sullen and erratic stranger. As Michael and his daughters try to find out what's happening to Katie, Michael begins to learn the truth behind their house. Beneath the home's idyllic front lies a disturbing past--and an evil force that has Katie in its clutches. Can Michael and his children save Katie before she's lost forever?

The last horror movie I had on my review plate was one House of the Witch, an averagely written haunted house movie that showed how a paint-by-numbers story can be livened up with the right touch. With an enthrallingly spooky atmosphere and earnest cast, the movie was able to rise above its generic script and two-dimensional characters. This review's subject, however, doesn't fare as well. In addition to being a thoroughly generic and personality-devoid possession movie, The Evil Down the Street has a whole host of other problems that make it borderline painful to get through.

I had the nagging feeling that I was in for a rough time just a few minutes into The Evil Down the Street. Hearing the dry-as-bones dialogue being performed by similarly stilted actors, my expectations took a sharp nosedive. Even worse is how none of the primary actors improve as the film goes on. Not that any of them are helped by the characters they're given to play, with the Ryan family having the collective depth and appeal of tissue paper. They're the standard family dynamic for a "Family Moves Into a House of Evil" movie: the hard-working loving father, the cheerful wife, and the bratty teenage kids. And as a result of their bad acting and dialogue, you're unlikely to be invested once the Ryans become victims of their house's dark secret.

But to add more fuel to the fire, The Evil Down the Street's script seems intent on making Michael Ryan and his daughters unfathomably complacent and/or stupid. Even by the standards of dumb horror movie characters, Michael and his children are mind-boggling in how much of Katie's unnerving behavior they're willing to ignore. In fact, it rarely seems that Michael and the kids respond to Katie's transformation with anything more severe than bewilderment, mild discomfort, or annoyance. Given how obvious and steep Katie's possession-spurred decline is, seeing her family do so little about it for so long made me want to climb through my computer screen and throttle some sense into them.

The supporting cast and characters fare little better, which in the case of one Father Bob (played by David J. Espinosa, who also directed/co-wrote/co-produced The Evil Down the Street) is a shame. After his introduction showed him doing shirtless push-ups and sporting a crucifix back tattoo, it seemed he would be an unconventional demon-expert pastor akin to Countdown's Father John. But instead, he's an average non-descript supernatural horror movie priest, with Espinosa's performance being as stiff as everyone else's. There's also a sense of wasted potential in the Ryans' somewhat quirky neighbors, who the film is content to use for little more than exposition dumping about the house's blandly vague history.

Going back to the complaint that opened this review, The Evil Down the Street couldn't feel more like an Amityville Horror ripoff if it tried. But while Amityville Horror (for all its faults) at least had some decent horror to it, The Evil Down the Street doesn't even have that much. You'd think that, with the demon wasting little time possessing Katie, that the movie would be packed with scares that build up to a terrifying climax. But instead, you just get the usual beginner haunted house/possession antics (disembodied voices, out-of-character freak-outs, etc.) stretched out for the entire movie.

Despite the word "Evil" being in the title, the possessed Katie acts more like an annoying prankster than a diabolical monster. The few times when Katie actually succeeds in being a chilling threat are few and far between, with a few being hampered by the cheesy "demonic" effects given to her voice. And thanks to the incredibly vague backstory given to the house and its demon, we don't even get to know what its ultimate goal is with the Ryan family. So in short, the story ends up being just as flimsy and impossible to care about as its characters. And the grand finale that the film's sloth-like pace seemed to be building up to? SPOILER ALERT Katie receiving an apparent offscreen exorcism before the final shot of the film implies the demon is still in the house and has more boring plans in store for the Ryans. In other words: nothing to justify the slogging 97 minutes it takes to get to this flop of an ending. Spoilers Over

Adding to the growing pile of grievances, The Evil Down the Street features cut-to-black transitions similar to the ones found in Betrayed by My Husband. But while the ones in that film were merely odd and annoying, the ones in The Evil Down the Street also draw attention to how sporadic the plot is in terms of both story and characters. A noteworthy example of this occurs with Kristen, who randomly alternates between being suspicious of her mother's weird behavior and being completely oblivious to it.

Any movie that has me questioning if I was too harsh on Next Level has to be a serious trainwreck, and The Evil Down the Street is just that. Unlike the aforementioned bland-as-can-be teenybopper drama, it seems there's almost nothing good to be found in this disaster of a horror film. With a horrifically marred script performed by a lifeless cast, it seems this indie horror was dead on arrival. With this being writing/directing team Craig Ahrens and David J. Espinosa's first full-length film, one can only hope the pair has used this unfortunate dud as an opportunity to learn and improve.

Score: 1 out of 10 peeled potatoes.

movie review
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About the Creator

Trevor Wells

Aspiring writer and film lover: Lifetime, Hallmark, indie, and anything else that strikes my interest. He/him.

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Twitter: @TrevorWells98

Instagram: @trevorwells_16

Email: [email protected]

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