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.
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