Demons, drugs, nerds, presidents... oh and fred williamson!

Dropping Evil 

Directed By: Adam Protextor 2012

Kicking off like it’s going to be another teens in the woods, bad guy slaughtering them type o’ low budget fun, Dropping Evil quickly takes a turn to something much more.  Trouble is it also gets very confusing before you really work out what that turn is. In the end we get a movie that is part slasher, part conspiracy, part looney tunes and even has some fantasy thrown in, sort of, maybe, in a weird gods and devils type thing, sort of, maybe. Let me just say there’s a lot going on and it isn’t always clear just what that means.  Sort of, maybe…

 Anyway, our four main protagonists go like this – Mike and Samantha are a couple, cool, good lookin’ kids, the other two Becky and Nancy are nerds.  Oh and despite the name Nancy is a boy, he’s also a straight edge god fearing cliché. And I loved that about the boy.  In fact while the four are off on a weekend trip away, he’s such a pain in the arse that the others decide to spike his drink with a little acid, just to liven him up and save them from a weekend of total god bothering. Things don’t go to plan though and when godboy has a bad trip he “sees” his friends’ true natures and kills them off. That’s not really a spoiler cos this isn’t your normal stalker flick. You kind of work that out when before the kids head off for their weekend in the woods we see Becky having a camera fitted into her eye by some mysterious corporation called ValYouCorp. Oh and in black and white no less while some musclebound god delivers his lines like he’s an amateur wrestler and Tiffany Shepis does… well, I’m not sure what she does really, she’s just eye candy or a confusing plot link or something, sort of, maybe.  

okay, okay i take it back, you are an integral part of the story... now put the knife down

Once Nancy goes nuts though things get really out of hand, with a branch through the head, a fishhook in the mouth, a decapitation and a wacked out tennis style showdown between axe and cardoor before a great what the fuck moment involving Mike and Nancy that I wont give away simply because it’s fun to make you wait for it yourself.  It’s only after this showdown though that we start to get a little explanation about just what the fuck is going on and how our four mainstay teens have a connection to ValYouCorp that goes back all of 18 years ago, when they were still babies in the wombs of their confused mothers. 

Because you axed for it!!

Throw in some cyborgs, a talking head and some godlike figures with connections to the President of the USA and you have a very weird stew. Before you really get any further though the damn movie abruptly ends and goes straight into the trailer for the sequel!! Yes, you heard me… sequelitis at its worst or best depending on how you feel… I don’t mind cliffhanger tv shows but a dvd?  Further inspection of the credits also reveals that this movie took four years to make so I guess that there explains why the movie finishes so abruptly, leaving us with far more questions than answers.  

Luckily this package contains three mini sequels(Daddy-O Died So Love Could Live, The Rise Of Gunhead and Becky’s The Boss ) that explain a little more of this convoluted story, a story that combines mythology, gods, zombies, science and big business, oh and explains what Tiffany is supposed to be doing (besides taking her shirt off). This has all the usual problems of a low budget flick but the use of colour and black and white to differentiate between the quartet’s story and the Corporation’s view point is a clever trick and the acting of Tom Taylor (Mike), Rachel Howell (Samantha) and Armin Shimerman as the CEO of Valyou Corp definitely lifts the movie.  And the story once you get it worked out is good, it’s just that it takes till the end before it starts to make sense and even then there are characters that aren’t quite explained and holes in the story that you don’t work out until you watch the mini movies. The real trouble it seems is over ambition, Protextor and crew had too many ideas and not enough time or money to fulfill them. A shame really because those extra mini movies really help you to understand just what the hell the story is about but you have to get to them first and I can see a lot of people not bothering, their loss really.  Ambitious, daft, entertaining, infuriating, occasionally funny this could have been much much more but hell I can’t fault ‘em for trying to be a little different, I just wish it had been a little smoother ride.

don't mess with the nerd!