Trailer to
Evil Remains:
Evil might, but the
memory of what you see when watching this thing won't. Trespassing is pretty much so forgettable in every way and form, although
director and scriptwriter and (partial) music composer James Anthony Merendino
(of such noteworthy filmic artistry as Witchcraft
IV: Virgin Heart [1992 / trailer], Witchcraft V: Dance with the Nevil [1993
/ trailer], Evil Never Sleeps [1995 / film] and The Upstairs Neighbor [1994 / trailer]) should be given
some credit for once again managing to put together an interesting cast of
up-and-comers, has-beens, never-beens and regularly employed character actors
(something he has done in most of his projects). Trespassing, for example, features a short appearance of an
unrecognizable Bond Girl (Maryam d'Abo of The
Living Daylights [1987 / trailer]), the always
enjoyable Kurtwood Smith (of RoboCop
[1987 / trailer]), and a
pre-"assholism scandal" Clayne Crawford. It's a shame that no one is
really given all that much to do, and that some were so obviously misdirected
in how to do what they do.
That said, however,
those with talent or at least presence (Clayne Crawford, Kurtwood Smith and
even Estella Warren as the Final Girl Kristy Goodman) manage to get through the movie without too much egg
on their face, while others (Daniel Gillies of Coming Home in the Dark [2021 / trailer]) wallow lost in an
apparent misdirected thespian inability. In the case of the last name, one
hopes nothing from this movie appears on his Film Projects Reel, because were
Razzies awarded to movies of this lowly character, his ham-fisted turn as Mark,
the dude who initiates the journey to the deserted house for master's thesis
research, truly deserved a nomination far more than Estelle Warren ever did for
her appearance in Tim Burton's first massive misfire, Planet of the Apes (2001 / trailer).
Set in Louisiana, Trespassing is a riff on the old
chestnut of a group of young adults going to a deserted house with a bad
reputation, separating, and then getting slaughtered one by one. In this case,
the instigator of the field trip is Mark (Gillies), a college student out to do
some on-site research regarding a modern myth (as opposed to urban legend)
about a local boy named Carl Bryce (Jeff Galpin) who, as we see in the
annoyingly pedestrian opening segment, killed John the Asshole Dad (Will Rokos)
and Linda the Ineffectual Mom (d'Abo), and then disappeared. It seems that the
house lies on cursed land, and the curse just went and made Carl plum loco —
nothing but a myth, right? Well, what do you think? Needless to say, Carl is
still there — or is he? The curse of the property, in any event, seems to have
the effect of turning trespassers into annoying jerks (if they weren't one
already), with the exception of the Final Girl, Kristy Goodman (Warren)....
As Mark, Daniel
Gillies begins and remains a dislikable method-actor jerk; in contrast, as his
brother Tyler, Clyane Crawford remains the most believable person on screen
primarily due to his low-key approach to his character. Sharon (Ashley Scott)
as the tag-along girlfriend of the Final Girl, is little more than fodder and
as forgettable as the movie itself, but then her whole character, despite her
distinguishing sexuality — the movie came out at a time when an oddly lez-phobic
song like Kate Perry's I Kissed a Girl (And I Liked It), which came four years after this movie, could still
be seen as a pro-lez song (Oh, wait! It's still seen as an LGBTQ anthem! Weird.) — is really just there to die. (The film is set in
Louisiana, so clearly the character-there-just-to-die couldn't be
Afro-American. Hell, he film's setting may be why there isn't even an Afro-American character of note in Trespassing [10-second appearances are not "of note"].)
The cursed-land aspect
of the narrative allows the movie to veer into the territory of the
supernatural, which is at least a bit more interesting than the typical killer
hiding under the floorboards (see: A Crack in the
Floor [2000]) or in the
woods (see: any given hillbilly slasher). The house setting itself is
reminiscent of such wonderfully run-down houses of horror as found in, say, Tobe Hooper's art-house exploitation-horror classic Chainsaw Massacre (1971 / dinner), but director
Merendino fails to fully take advantage of it. Instead, he tends towards an
overuse of close-ups and dark shadows that indicates a possible lack of
directorial vision; for swathes of the movie, he also has an incredibly hard
time visually establishing and keeping a mood of dread and fear. This handicap
is already evident in the first shots of the flick, which have little to do
with the narrative other than set location, in which he scores what looks to be
a moving Mexican Day of the Dead-inspired Mardi Gras float to an almost
hilariously generic example of a droning This-Is-A-Cheap-Horror-Movie
synthesizer dirge.
Unluckily, while much
is bad or generic in Trespassing,
little is all that scary and even less is funny, which pretty much renders the
movie non-imperative viewing.
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