Adam & Evil (2004)
2/10
Here we go again with another bottom draw product.
8 June 2006
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.
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