After encountering a ghost in his family's vacation home, modern artist Dan (Steve Zissis, who more than one reviewer has called "schlubby") and his wife Mary (Jennifer Irwin) hire an "industrial-grade exorcist" named Oscar (Mark Proksch) to get rid of the beings. But Dan soon realizes that ridding the home of evil will not be as simple as it seems.
While the film as a whole is good, it does suffer from an inability to be categorized. While labeled as a "horror comedy", this is far from the truth. The comedy does not go much beyond the early scene with the first exorcist (Dan Bakkedahl), who is clearly either a fraud or flat-out nutty. The horror angle does not go much beyond the jump scare from seeing a ghost on the stairs in one scene. At no point do we have a "horror comedy" blend.
The real story here is of a man who is clearly lonely and whose loneliness drives him to be both desperate and obnoxious. This is neither scary nor funny, but instead creates a constant awkward atmosphere (which Gary Abrams has aptly compared to Bill Murray in "What About Bob?"). If the goal of a horror film is to create an unease in the audience, they succeeded on this count but probably not in the way they intended. Again, this is not a bad film, just one that is a challenge to classify.
The film also suffers from the cover or poster art. This actually projects the idea that the film is even sillier or low budget than it actually is. This is not silly, and while it may be low budget it never comes across that way. The production value is every bit as good as it needs to be for the concept. The ghost, for example, is legitimately creepy, even though it is about as simple as it could be.
If you are looking for a more conventional horror film about an unconventional man's approach to the supernatural, the film for you is "A Dark Song". But "Another Evil" has a potential to grow on you. While it fails to hit home because you never know what to feel, that very same thing might be what gets you to come back for repeat viewings. There is clearly something more to Oscar than first meets the eye.
The movie is out now from Dark Sky Films. The home release is fairly bare bones with no commentary or interviews to speak of, unfortunately. Though the praise offered in this review is clearly "guarded" and with its own caveats, "Another Evil" may prove to be an acquired taste...
