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24%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #10,535
...out of 20,725 movies
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Reporters uncover the dark secret behind Acheron, a shadowy town whose inhabitants have mysteriously died.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: December 10, 2006
Have you ever seen one of those movies that has an interesting plot written out on the back of the DVD case and features a storyline that starts out with a lot of promise, but ultimately leaves you wondering what happened by the midway point? Evil's City is one of those movies, and when I found myself wondering what exactly happened, it wasn't the plot that I was thinking about - it was the movie as a whole. How could someone screw this idea up so badly?
The storyline centers around Courtney (Laura Mazur), a journalist for the local news show, and her cameraman Todd (Brandon Largent). One night, as the duo are covering a mass-murder story, the murderer decides to make himself known by holding Courtney hostage while rambling on about a town called Acheron. The man is eventually put down by a sniper, and Courtney decides that there may be a story behind this Acheron town. After doing her homework, she finds out that Acheron is nothing more than a ghost-town after all of the inhabitants suddenly died off from unknown causes, and that's all that needs to be said to get her and her cameraman buddy out there to figure out what happened. They soon find out that while everyone in the town did technically die, they're not exactly dead.
There, see? Doesn't that sound like a storyline that has some promise, even if it does sound like a mindless zombie flick? Well, it's definitely not a zombie movie, and while it may have held some promise during the scriptwriting phase, the end result was nothing short of pathetic. That's a harsh statement, but it can't all be attributed to the storyline - it could have used some work, but it was decent enough. No, the problem here was... well, just about everything else.
For starters, how about that acting? Now, I watch a lot of low-budget direct-to-video offerings, so I realize that not every movie is going to feature award-winning performances. I can tolerate a lot in that regard and still enjoy the movie as a whole, but that was simply impossible here. Want to know how bad it was? Try picking up the nearest object that contains writing - be it a book, a magazine, or simply skim over the ingredients list on a soda can - and read a portion of it aloud. Done? Alright, I guarantee that you were much more convincing than the "actors" and "actresses" found within this film, even when they were supposed to be in grave danger. I have never heard phrases like "Run, they're after us!" and "We're all going to die!" spoken in such underwhelmed, couldn't-care-less tones before sitting through this.
As a matter of fact, I think there were a few scenes where the cast members themselves were laughing (when, according to the storyline, they obviously shouldn't have been). However, I can't say that for certain thanks to the lighting used throughout the duration of the film. You see, when the cast starts to explore this town, it's all shot in a dark and shadowy style. This is perfectly acceptable, as you obviously want to set some sort of a spooky tone in a film like this. The problem arises when you realize that the director decided that everything should be shot in this style, leaving you clueless as to what's going on in a solid eighty percent of the scenes. Who is that dead on the floor? What did the group see that made them scream? Is that a demon or is that Courtney coming back from taking a shit? Questions like these crossed my mind constantly throughout the running time, all as a result of not being able to see a goddamned thing.
Given the lighting situation and the horrible acting, I probably could have still found some enjoyment from this offering based on the storyline alone - remember, I did say that it was fairly solid and could have worked out nicely. But then, I realize that I haven't even mentioned the abundance of useless characters that do nothing but confuse you as to who it is that's doing what (remember, you can hardly see anything, so looking at facial details to distinguish the characters apart is out of the question). Most horror films give you a cast of four to eight people, with one or two being the obvious survivors from scene one and the rest being there simply to serve as demon fodder. Here we have the two "main" characters, but we also have a supporting cast of well over a dozen. A trio of competing journalists show up to get the story first, an army platoon (!) shows up to rescue everyone, a preacher shows up to drop a couple of ominous warnings, random women show up to look spooky and rattle chains, and the end result is not knowing who is who thanks to the sea of characters who come and go and the obvious lighting issues.
I would detail the horrendous CGI effects (I've seen better during late-night paid programming), but is it really necessary by this point in the review? The storyline has promise, but that's all this movie has going for it: a little bit of promise, and a whole lot of disappointment. Avoid, unless you enjoy the feeling of wanting to gouge out your eyes in order to put an end to the suffering. 1/10.
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