Bank robbers go on the lam after a heist leaves some of their crew dead. The loose cannon of the group takes a mom and her little leaguer hostage and holes up in an abandoned farmhouse. Before long they are confronted by a knife wielding slasher. When the rest of the crew shows up to split the loot, the killer begins stalking them too.
This almost has kind of a Charles B. Pierce feel. It starts off as sort of a true crime sort of deal before the killer shows up. His appearance certainly seems inspired by Pierce’s The Town That Dreaded Sundown too.
Likewise, the scenes with the thieves have the flavor of one of those Tarantino knockoffs from the late ‘90s, especially when they argue about who gets to wear what mask to the heist. The lone woman on the team bitches, “I wanted to be Snow White!” and the leader scolds, “You’re the Wolf Man!” In fact, the sudden switchover from crime flick to horror is reminiscent of From Dusk Till Dawn now that I think about it.
This ultimately winds up being closer to Pierce than Tarantino. Like Pierce’s ‘70s output, there are long lulls in between the good stuff. When the good stuff finally does come around, it’s a bit restrained, albeit reasonably well executed. Writer/director Stevan Mena does a fine job in the third act when he begins pouring on the slasher cliches. (He delivers at least one solid jump scare too.) The score is quite good as it is clearly reminiscent of the slasher movies of old, especially Halloween and Friday the 13th. (The killer bears a more than passing resemblance to Jason in Part 2.)
For something that’s essentially a low budget genre mash-up, Malevolence works more often than not. Any time you put two different genres together, the results are bound to be uneven. Fortunately, it remains watchable throughout, even if Mena never quite hits it out of the park. (It also runs on about ten minutes too long to boot.)
Two sequels followed.
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