As is often the case
of idiosyncratic independent productions, however, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil was never the hit
it should have been and thus, in turn, obviously never opened as many doors as
it should have. It probably didn't help all that much that Craig's next project was
the failed pay-TV pilot (2013 / trailer) to Ruben Fleischer's Zombieland (2009), the latter of which is a fun film that had the studio support required
to become the hit that Tucker & Dale
should have been. (BTW, as if you didn't know, Zombieland now has a sequel: Zombieland: Double Tap [2019 / trailer].)
As luck would have
it, however, two years ago and totally off the radar, Craig popped up again
with a new comedy horror, Little Evil.
Unluckily, it is a film that no one has heard of and that now seems to be
relegated to the nether regions of Netfux,
its producer, which is where we accidentally found it while searching
desperately for something half-way interesting to watch.
Little Evil, like Tucker
& Dale, is surprisingly good-natured for a horror comedy, and although
its core pedagogic theme may be that we all have free choice — or, to borrow
the key platitude of the (sadly) theatrical big budget flop Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's
Assistant (2009 / trailer), "It's not what you are, but who you
are" — Little Evil, like Tucker & Dale, is also an ode of
sorts to the power of friendship. For in the end, were it not for all his pals
from the Stepfather's Support Group, the hero of Little Evil would hardly have been able save the day (and, in turn,
the world) in the final scenes.
The basic plot of Little Evil is a twist on that of The Omen (1976 / trailer): in 7th heaven for
having married Samantha (Evangeline Lilly), the single-mom woman of his dreams — like, who
wouldn't be in seventh heaven if married to Evangeline Lilly? — everyday-Joe Gary
(Adam Scott of Krampus [2015] and the great Alan Smithee's Hellraiser: Bloodline [1996 / trailer]) comes to realize that Samantha's
weird and unfriendly son, Lucas (Owen Atlas), is no one less than the
anti-Christ, fathered by no one less than Satan himself. All the signs are
there to see, for everyone but a beautiful and ditzy mother blinded by her love
for her child…
Like Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, Little Evil rarely delves too far into
the dark, and its jokes are rarely pointlessly mean despite the "horror
movie" framework. For that, however, Little
Evil is far less bloody or comically violent than Tucker & Dale vs. Evil — indeed, the for-laughs money shots of Little Evil hardly even hold a candle
to the original Omen (we never saw
the 2006 remake [trailer]), despite that film being a creaky 41 years
older. Aside from a quick scene of a teacher being pulled from the spikes of a
fence (a scene that momentarily made us remember our favorite Mario Bava movie,
Kill, Baby… Kill! [1966 / trailer]) and a truly disturbing dream
sequence involving worms, Little Evil
is relatively toothless when it comes to the visceral that contemporary
audiences tend to expect, even in a horror comedy. It is very much a PG film — not
even PG-13 — and is also all the weaker for it…
That said, if one is
in no way familiar with Craig's first film, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, Little
Evil definitely will be a much less disappointing and much more
entertaining watch, for it is truly a funny and entertaining horror comedy that
only becomes in any way lacking when put in comparison to Craig's first film.
Played straight and well-paced, thanks to its low viscerality Little Evil is a horror comedy
appropriate for the whole family — which was perhaps Craig's intention in the
first place. Give it a go.
No comments:
Post a Comment