Malevolence (2004)

Malevolence: Directed by Stevan Mena. With R. Brandon Johnson, Samantha Dark, Heather Magee, Richard Glover. It’s ten years after the kidnapping of Martin Bristol. Taken from a backyard swing at his home at the age of six, he is forced to witness unspeakable crimes of a deranged madman. For years, Martin’s whereabouts have remained a mystery…until now.

“Iu0026#39;ve been wanting to check this out since learning that it won Best Feature at the 2003 NYC Horror Film Festival. Now after watching it Iu0026#39;m guessing every other film it was competing against mustu0026#39;ve REALLY sucked.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eMalevolence is in no way a bad film, yet itu0026#39;s just not that good either. The concept of mixing a robbery-gone-wrong story with a slasher film is pretty original, but this only makes itu0026#39;s heavy use of slasher clichés drag it down into mediocrity. What would be perfectly acceptable idiotic behavior from stupid teenagers in a fun slasher film, becomes unbearably frustrating because one would expect more from the unconventional characters portrayed here.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAs the film stumbles forward through all the usual u0026quot;scaresu0026quot; of the genre, I only became more and more frustrated by how a good idea is just thrown out the window in order to fall back on things that have been done to death (and much better) 25 years ago. All this is topped off by a soundtrack that was obviously intended to be u0026quot;old-schoolu0026quot; yet comes off as just really annoying and repetitive.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eStill, as far as low-budget indie horror flicks go, Malevolence is decently shot, and while it does bring in a new mix to the formula, it immediately waters it down by simply not doing anything worth-while with it.”