Adam & Evil

Exceptionally bad! OF course you should expect nothing less from the likes Andrew Van Slee. How the hell does that man make a living making crap? Apparently not just movies, but songs too, he has the midas touch - everything he touches is crap! Big smelling pile of steaming crap! This movie sucks so much, here's what really bad: 1) The sets are pathetic! Apparently they were so small, that in EVERY scene the actors had to walk as s l o w as possible in order to stay on set. And they were so fake and bad, like when there in the woods, yet there on sand? 2) The acting is sooo freaking bad, the cast is deplorable, where did they get these people? In one scene the guy is TRYING to cry and emote, it is terrible! This is the poorest casting EVER! 3) The title had NOTHING to do with the movie! Not like there was much plot anyway.

4) The camera work. Wow, really bad. There are so many shots where someone was giving dialogue, but only half of their face was in the shot! They must have been in a rush to get this steaming pile of crap of a movie out to the public.

5) The 'gore' was pathetic. The least a stupid horror movie can do is give us good death scenes, reward us with watching these stupid people getting grusemly killed - but NO, its so bad with just fake movie blood thrown on someone to show that they are dead. I would have liked a big gaping wound when a throat gets slashed instead of stupid red magic marker drawn on the victim's neck - which is exactly what this movie does.

The best part of the movie: One of the characters says at one point "We should just all kill oursleves" to express her hopelessness at the situation. Yes, that is true, they should have killed themselves, that would have been MUCH better. In fact, everyone involved with the making of this atrocity should kill themselves.

A group of teens head out on a camping trip to celebrate their high school graduation, but their party mood is short lived when they discover that a masked killer is hunting them down one by one. Now just who is this killer? Is it the two shady fellas who followed them, the park's grounds keeper, the sheriff or is it his unfaithful wife. But there's one thing that's haunting Adam's mind and that's the killer knows that of his terrible secret involving accidental death of a family.

Um, I don't know what to really make of this travesty of a hack job. But I can tell you it's simply textbook stuff all round that's merely plain ( err, but quite a dud more often) for what it is. Ugh, really I think I am being quite generous overall on this particular amateurish indie horror effort. What takes form here is a very typical backwoods survival slasher with just too much talk and innuendo and far too little action and gratuitous nudity. Which can be quite sad for the lack of skin, since there is some nice eye candy on show. It just seems to promise more than it actually delivers, by teasing us with such tame excuses for horror.

You can say that the film is just plain scary for all the wrong reasons with such banal and cringe-worthy dialogues. Real deflated acting from a young cast of stock characters who are either constantly horny, lazing about and when the trouble kicks in, its all about the clueless YELLING(!) and spiting out a good quota of badass drivel like you always do in these situations. The story and atmosphere tries for that 80s slasher feel by going for a big body count, but it totally misses out on the style with its lack of brutality and gory edge. Simply the deaths are quite sudden and reasonably clumsy with some brisk editing. There's a little bit of nudity, but it's rather a quick topless scene from the Allison Warnyca as the Sheriff's wife. She's probably the most fun that the film offers! But what made me grit my teeth was that the opening 30 minutes was incredibly boring with its rambling teens toying around in many filler scenes that I couldn't believe I still had an hour to go. It feels like it takes too long before the real fun begins and when it does, it gets a tad better (well, maybe more like tweeny weeny bit). From the get-go you realise the cliché filled plot is a convolutely rushed project that's completely bled dry of ideas. While, the back-story surrounding this slasher is just very cheesy to believe. But hold on it was the film's revelation that left me stone-cold because of the ridiculous motive and it goes over-the-top in its daftness. You can probably guess the killer just before the revelation with all the hints that crop up, but it's quite unsatisfying and doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you think about it. The usual red herrings feature quite heavily with some pointless characters who are just there for that stupid factor than really adding anything of real importance.

The direction isn't awful but it's just generally uninspired. What was far from uninspiring was the downright noisy and really loud rock soundtrack and overstated score that at times over powers certain scenes. There are moments when it suddenly goes nuts when the film would break into a montage with a supporting rock song. Damn, that did get annoying. The camera-work is pretty standard and quite relentless when it has to be, but when it focuses on the killer we mostly see the lower half of the body. It's looks like it was shot on digital too. The setting is that of campsite by a lake in some brooding woodlands. It does get atmospheric in spots, which is kind of good since there's no suspense to be found.

Well, what's there left to say; it just takes a very big slice out of the slasher market without adding anything special of its own.

After their high-school graduation, eight friends decide to celebrate in a campground in Lake Nede with booze and sex. They get lost and stop in a bar to ask for directions. One of the boys is seduced by the slut wife of the local sheriff, while the group is chased by two bad elements from their school. Once in the lake, one by one is killed by a murderer, and the survivors guess who might be the criminal.

"Adam & Evil" is the perfect cheesy movie: the silly and flawed screenplay seems to be written by a moron, so stupid it is with laughable dialogs and situations; the shameful direction is inexistent; the unknown ham actors and actresses show a total lack of talent at least in this movie. The story has lots of holes and clichés, and it is funny to see, for example, the car fully loaded with eight persons, and I guess where all of the camping stuff was transported. When the group finds that there are three dead friends, they split to facilitate the work of the killer. The twist disclosing the criminal is one of the most terrible and ridiculous that I have ever seen. I could spend the whole night writing flaws in this flick, but I believe that this sample is enough to show how bad this film is. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Segredos Mortais" ("Deadly Secrets")

There are not enough bad adjectives in the dictionary to describe this movie. The acting is a joke. Not one actor in this entire movie has talent. Not moderate nor slight talent. NO talent. The dialog is so laughable.

"I'm going to slice you like a turkey" says one of the victims to the killer. "I don't scare easy and I'm pi$$ed" says another.

The girls run around like descendants of Rambo, claiming they are going to kick some a$$. Oh yeah, that's real scary, watching chicks act like they have been shot up with a gallon of testosterone. Why do women have to try and act like men?

The only scary in the this movie is the acting, the direction, and the fact that it was ever made. This movie is an embarrassment to the horror genre.

Avoid at all costs!

Adam & Evil is a rather average entry into the teen horror market by Canada's king of crap, Andrew Van Slee. While Adam & Evil doesn't quite match the heights (or lows, depending on which way you look at it) of "Net Games", it offers enough blood and lame humour to ensure a relatively painless 90 minutes of trashy entertainment.

This film revisits one of horror's classic premises. A group of teenagers go camping only to be butchered by the local psycho. This scenario, while not exactly groundbreaking, has the advantage of providing plenty of opportunity for mixing a bit of sex and nudity in between the slicing and dicing. In fact, the first half of Adam & Evil plays more like a bad episode of a teen drama than a horror movie. Nothing really happens apart from a lot of bickering and embarrassing conversations about sex and penis size. There are also several confused flashbacks to a fire, which are neither scary nor disturbing.

Thankfully, things pick up when the blood starts to flow. There are throat slashings and crossbow shootings but nothing particularly gory or original. I did cheer, however, when the loser serenading his girlfriend (on a raft, no less) meets his end. The action becomes slightly less insipid when the survivors flee the camping grounds. This is despite the fact that their every action flies in the face of basic common sense. The remainder of the film offers a couple of tense moments and a reasonably enjoyable finale, which unfortunately is ruined by one of the most ridiculous surprise twists in recent memory. The twist is so stupid that I found it strangely satisfying, much like the insane turn of events in Van Slee's high watermark "Net Games". The motive behind this serial killer's actions is really beyond all belief.

The actors are uniformly terrible. However, given the script it is hard to imagine anyone leaving this film with their dignity fully intact. I can live with appalling actors if the gore content is high enough. Adam & Evil is pretty tame as far as the gore is concerned but there is enough poorly executed violence to make it relatively bearable. Andrew Van Slee has once again outdone himself on the script and his directorial skills are as peculiar as ever. The gore effects are reasonable and the film is thankfully brief.

Adam & Evil is the kind of horror trash that I find mindlessly entertaining. I seriously doubt that this film will frighten anyone over 12 years old, but it is an inoffensive enough way to spend 90 minutes of your time.