“Ghostbusters meets Dawn Of The Dead, caught in The Twilight Zone” is a pretty bold statement for an indie film to make, wouldn’t you think? Yet that’s the claim writer/director Ari Kirschenbaum’s film Live-Evil has made. Heck, the film’s poster has the tagline “It’s the end of the f*cking world”. With all this gutsy bravado, the film has to be good, right? We even get genre vet Tony “I was Candyman” Todd in this one! Really, what can go wrong?
On Halloween night in a small town, Deputy Hancock (Charlena Amoia) investigates an incident that leads to the arrest of a woman who doesn’t appear to be all there. After placing the woman in the police station’s holding cell, a supernatural force within the woman is unleashed. The force is able to tap into people’s fears and coerce them into doing nefarious things. Eventually, the supernatural force is able to raise the dead for some nefarious purpose, leaving to Hancock, Sheriff Pete (Vladimir Kulich) and a handful of other citizens to fight off the undead.
For starters, I enjoyed Amoia’s performance as the film’s lead, and was also the standout of the cast. Believable, and with the right amount of attitude for the role, Amoia holds her own. Kulich lost me whenever he ventured into over-the-top territory, and came across as more like one of those stereotypical crazy drunkards when he was possessed (the beard didn’t help matters). I suppose that it plays into the humour that Kirschenbaum is reaching for with the film. And in typical indie film bait-and-switches, Tony Todd was onscreen for less than five minutes, but still managed to nail his role as a distraught preacher and prisoner of the undead. The rest of the cast more or less did their part, although some characters (such as Ira David Wood III’s Professor George) got on my nerves with their performances.
On the presentation front, Kirschenbaum tries a few things to make the film visually interesting. The film begins in monochrome, which shifts to colour at a certain point in the film. Also, the film is broken up into six chapters, with title cards marking the beginning of these chapters. I’m not sure what made Kirschenbaum decide to do this, as the film is more of an ongoing story rather than segments that need tying together. There’s a mix of practical effects (namely the undead costumes and makeup) and CG. As expected, the CGI is on the underwhelming side, although it works better in some parts than others.
Ultimately, Live-Evil falls flat on several fronts. As mentioned, the film really doesn’t lend itself to having those chapter cards, which feel very out of place in this linear film. I suppose Kirschenbaum had to do something to break up the slow pacing of the film, which isn’t helped by the drawn-out title sequence. It looks cool, but did it need to be three minutes long? The same could be said for the title cards, which feel totally different to the rest of the film. Even the soundtrack falls victim to this. Yes, it has that quirky jazz feeling to it, but again, feels like it belongs in another film. The humour aspect is another failing. It mainly comes in the form of the cheesy dialogue, which feels forced and comes across as a bad attempt at recreating the humour found in the dialogue in Ghostbusters. Totally not going to happen.
The sad thing about Live-Evil is that it could’ve been a fun time had Kirschenbaum not decided to go the pretentious route with the above-mentioned boasting, quirky visuals and lame attempts at humour. Cutting that out would’ve made things a lot more tolerable, instead of the weak mish-mash of a film we’ve ended up with now. Pass it up for an evening with Ghostbusters and Dawn Of The Dead instead.
