Another Evil (2016)

Absolutely brilliant

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

There were some parts that weren't too hard to watch. The beginning was ok, had some potential but the ending was awful.

I do NOT recommend watching this unless you love cliff-hangers. I gave the movie a 2 star rating just for this reason. Nothing ticks me off more than a movie that doesn't answer the plot questions still hanging. I wish movies had to list in descriptions: Hey this movie runs you off a cliff at the end!

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...

First and foremost this is not a comedy. We have a haunted house and artist owner Dan gets a recommendation and hires Os (Steve Zissis) to rid the house of the ghosts/demons/whatever. There is no 'relationship' between the two other then the fact that they are alone in the house for almost a week. Most of the time, and this was so irritating, Dan merely sits/stands and listens and watches, saying very as he realized two things. First, he does not understand anything Os is doing and second, he realizes Os is nuttier then a fruit cake i.e. describing how he plucked eye balls out of a woman's corpse with juice squirting everywhere. OK, Dan, why not terminate Os that very moment? Also, a bizarre scene with a stripper called to the house and which added nothing to the tale.When Os begins destroying Dan's house and paintings he tells Os to leave. I will say the Os, played by Steve Zissis, portrays lunatic so well it seems nonsensical that Dan did not end the nonsense early on. It is one thing to be a zealot exorcist, highly recommended, and quite another to be a madman that will, at the drop of a ghostly hat, see Satan within Dan's teen son and to develop a psycho murder plot that might include Dan's son and possibly Dan and his wife as well. After all, if he kills the son he would have to kill the witnesses. Forget the police or self help when a ghost can intervene 'after' Os has already begun his torture campaign. So a ghost with very bad timing. Seeing Os naked in the kitchen, to catch vibes, then asking Dan about locations he had sex with his wife and suggesting his son has been possessed by Satan should have been way more then enough to call the cops when Os refused to leave. The fact that Os could sweet talk Dan at that point, to cancel the police, is absurd. Os was obviously 100% loony been material of the highest order. The final confrontation was staged poorly with Dan, as happens in too many films, leaving slightly injured Os with the shovel so that when Dan turns his back Os can have another go at him. You can't save your son by letting a psycho would be killer have a second shot at you with a deadly shovel. Take the shovel, toss the shovel but do not ever leave it by the side of the would be and still viable psycho killer.It is not clear how Dan allowed his wife and son return to the cabin knowing psycho Os would be there?this movie is perfect for rabid Steve Zissis fans. For me, I am still in recovery.