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[Review] Supernatural Revenge Thriller ‘Evangeline’ Fails to Thrill
Evangeline is a supernatural revenge flick that looks really great with its gothic undertones, but is bogged down by religious overtones that never quite make an impact. The story and leads are solid enough that writer-director Karen Lam didn’t need to infuse it with the ol’ Catholic rigmarole. By the third act, there’s an overload of these religious tinges as well as a gratuitous amount of brutality toward the titular character.
It reminded me of Ms. 45 in reverse. In that film, all the horrible shit happens to Zoë Lund in the first half hour or so (typical of rape-revenge, I could’ve used loads of other examples). But in Lam’s film, Evangeline (Kat de Lieva) is brutalized again and again and again. Even when she starts her path of revenge, she’s intermittently abused. Catharsis is a major element of this type of film and Lam takes that away from viewers several times, only to give it back in the end when it’s too little too late. It’s an interesting approach, you have to give her that, but when its interspersed with religious cutaways and (not one) but two uninteresting subplots, it’s ultimately an underwhelming and messy experience.
Kat de Lieva does a great job transforming Evangeline from an innocent college girl to a raging force of nature. She doesn’t have much dialogue for the second half of the film but she knows how to express enough with her wide-eyed fury to make an impact. She never overdoes it. When Evangeline first arrives at college, she’s a sheltered girl who’s known heaps of tragedy in her life. As she gradually begins to let down her guard, she’s beaten to death by resident frat playboy Richard Harmon (Bates Motel, Trick ‘r Treat) and his laggies. Left for dead in the woods, Evangeline becomes possessed by a vengeful spirit, whose origins are left up for interpretation. Aside from a pair of clawed, demonic looking hands, we never see the spirit. I dig that approach.
The script builds up nicely but is severely dark and completely humorless. There’s really no relief from the tension, only small escapes like the shots of Eva sitting in a chair in her unconscious (or something like that). And going back to the brutality towards her, (*slight spoiler ahead*) a random character is introduced very late into the movie that assaults Eva. There’s a tease of him in the beginning, then he’s not heard of for nearly the entire film. His entrance is just so haphazard that it’s ridiculous. He also seems like he belongs in a different film. It’s another example of Evangeline fumbling towards its climax.
The film certainly looks better than most indie horror films. Cinematographer Michael Balfry has a deep resume (including numerous episodes of The Dead Zone) and his work in Evangeline is fantastically moody. I just wish the visuals matched the emotion we’re meant to feel.
Evangeline hits VOD May 8 and DVD June 9.
Night School, director Ken Hughes and writer Ruth Avergon‘s tale of a headhunting slasher on the streets of Boston, arrived in the early Golden Age of the slasher film and never quite broke through the endurance test that other films in the subgenre, like Friday the 13th, managed to pass with flying colors. Blame it on a more cerebral tone, a crowded market, whatever you like, but saying it’s a shame that the film didn’t break through doesn’t begin to cover it.
Night School isn’t just an underrated slasher, or an underseen one. For my money, it’s one of the best films the subgenre has ever produced, full stop, and Vinegar Syndrome’s new 4K UHD restoration, arriving just in time for the film’s 45th anniversary, is must-have proof. Stacked with special features highlighting the craft of the film and its place in slasher history, and headlined by a gorgeous restoration showcasing the wonderfully textured production, this is Night School as it’s meant to be seen for slasher devotees everywhere.
So, what makes the film so effective? It starts very simply, with the revelation that a killer with a very cool knife and a motorcycle helmet as a mask is murdering young women in Boston, taking off their heads, and dropping those heads in the nearest body of water (no matter how small).
Solving the case falls on Judd Austin (Leonard Mann), a detective with an academic background who traces all of the victims in one way or another back to a local night school. There, suspicion falls on a womanizing professor (Drew Snyder) who sleeps around on his research assistant and romantic partner, Eleanor (Rachel Ward), whose own death could be right around the corner.
I’m doing my best to stay as spoiler-free as possible here, not just because I think plenty of slasher fans still need to see Night School, but because the film is quite determined to be a whodunit in the classic Italian giallo sense. The kills are brutal and elaborate, the killer deliberately covered head-to-toe in leather and a gleaming black helmet, the knife and the headhunting a disturbing signature. Avergon’s script is well-versed in the trappings of exactly this kind of story, complete with red herrings galore. And yet, by the time it’s all wrapping up, there’s also the sense that the answer was right there in front of you the entire time, something the very best films by legends like Mario Bava and Dario Argento could also achieve.
But on to the restoration: Like the best of the gialli, Night School is also a beautifully engineered film full of colors and delicate camera compositions and sound design. The opening kill, which takes place on a playground carousel outside of a daycare, is rich in exactly this kind of thing, from the cityscapes that lead into the scene to the sound of a motorcycle slowly rolling forward, its engine already dead. Cinematographer Mark Irwin, best known for his many collaborations with David Cronenberg, paints the film in rich reds, absinthe greens, and haunting, chilled blue-white light on wet Boston streets, all of which are preserved beautifully by the restoration team at work on this one.
It’s a movie that very deliberately evokes a specific place – the aging streets of Boston in the 1980s, and the halls of relatively low-level academia – and then takes that place into haunted territory, saturating every frame with color and shadow that suggests a killer lurking just out of view.
Night School is not a massively gore-heavy film, but it does deliver the slasher goods with a series of tense, often unpredictable kills and body discoveries that range from the darkly comic to the flat-out jaw-dropping. That’s thanks to the sound design, the score, the editing from Robert Reitano, and more, all of which add to the film’s giallo soul.
In every case, the scene’s geography is outstanding, and it’s easy to see where the simplest possible kill shot might land, but the film never goes for the obvious. Throw in a surprisingly (for 1981, anyway) feminist bent to the storytelling and some very progressive moments for an early slasher film, and this one fits right in with Black Christmas and The Slumber Party Massacre as a film with depth you can just keep unpacking.
That depth, helped along by a load of featurettes and two new commentary tracks featuring members of the crew, is what stands out the most in this new 4K set. Night School may be a niche film recognized mostly by horror addicts and the slasher faithful, but it deserves to be something more, a landmark on the roadmap of slasher cinema history. It’s one of the best in the genre, and this restoration highlights, underlines, and shouts that from the rooftops.
Night School is now available in 4K UHD from Vinegar Syndrome.
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