By Iloz Zoc
“Hello? I’ve been on hold a long time,” I said.
My phone call was turning into being about as endless as writer-director Laszlo Illes’ two hour movie, Ever After. Sitting across from me was Paul Holstenwall, smiling like the Chesire Cat. I wanted to punch him so bad for making me sit through this slasher.
“What? No. I mean yes. I’ve been on hold for forever. Look, is anyone at the League of Reluctant Reviewers available? I have this movie that needs–yes, I know it’s Labor Day, but I really–what? Are you kidding me? Everyone’s out for the week? Great. Just great.” I hung up.
I saw Zombos stepping into the room, raising my hopes. The minute he saw Paul he quickly stepped out. My hopes were dashed. Paul was still smiling. I scratched my right eyebrow and resigned myself to writing about a movie that misses its mark like William Tell in a thick fog. I took comfort in imagining I was shooting an apple off of Paul’s head. But missed, badly.
The idea for this bloodiest of fairy tales may have started with good intentions, but the end result is a woodenly or overly acted story that has terrible dialog and ill-placed pauses in the action to deliver even more terrible dialog. Go to IMDb and you will see a padded score of 7.1. I’ve watched 7+ rated movies and this isn’t one of them. If camp was intended, its missing. If satire or any sense of comedy was sought, that didn’t go as planned. The only saving grace is having Michael Berryman, Malcolm McDowell’s voice, Kane Hodder, and Mark Sheppard in the cast. But Berryman is under-used and Kane Hodder’s Big Bad Wolf is brief and lackluster.
Five girlfriends headed to a remote forest lodge for a bachelorette party. Their dialog during the drive-up sounded improvised and did nothing to endear any of them to you or me. I knew these people were heading into trouble and I only thought, yes, I’d like to see their heads roll after that guy-inspired sex-talk. Prince Charming (Philippe Reinhardt), hamming up the not at all charming part, greeted them. Immediately, the only thought one of the girlfriends had was to make out with him, not that this guy’s one Daffy close to being a Looney Tune. She invites him to join the party later that night. He does, dressed in a frilly shirt and light yellow brocade jacket.
They’re soon off to the shed where he pulls out some slippers as she becomes paralyzed. Meanwhile, the party continues with more improvised sex-talk and, oh look, who are those two pig-masked guys standing in the yard? One even held an axe. Finally, the sex-talk stopped. The girls make a run to the van, but if you were expecting some serious final girl action, nope. They manage to drive away only to find a way to leave the van, their only weapon, and means of escape. Did I mention the other pig-masked guy who showed up with a Home Depot flamethrower?
Then they started blaming each other, oblivious to the urgency of the moment. More talk ensued after the hunter (Michael Berryman) comes looking for the two guys he dropped off the night before. So more talk with him. I struggled to get my eyes back down after they rolled deeply into my head.
Standing still long enough to be sitting ducks, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf (still Kane Hodder) appeared. I imagined cartoon woodland creatures pulling up too, just to watch this whole mess. Now that would have been awesome. Instead, Little Red (Riana Emma Balla) managed to get the upper hand, leading to a drawn out spat between the two soon to be wedded people who clearly didn’t use Trivago to book their getaway turned slashaway. Really bad slo-mo ruined a tense scene at this point, too, so I started thinking this was one of those movies where either the director is so inept you cannot tell if he’s being serious, or so good at playing inept, you still could not tell if he was being serious.
Eventually the group finds a cave to hide in and chat some more. The one very well constructed scene that had me impressed came in around the 1:07:38 mark. If was so good my eyeballs rolled back into place. But then they smelled pie and we were back in stupid land. They found a cabin in the woods with a black goat in the yard and an old woman doing her best impression of a witch (Bonnie Aarons). They eat her food. Yes, my eyeballs rolled back up into their sockets. Mind you, they took the time to eat food offered by a person oddly dressed like Maleva the Elder, even though they were running away from weirdly dressed characters trying to kill them. Let that sink in.
Some shotgun blasts later, followed by an easy capture, and we left the woods to join the Ringmaster (Mark Sheppard) at the circus. I love mark Sheppard ever since his sinister but lovable devil, Crowley, in Supernatural. This was not one of his better roles. He got to talk a lot. And I mean, A. Lot.
I realized what was missing. Aside from good acting, good writing, and good direction. These purported fairytale killers needed a little supernatural. Just dressing them up in masks and costumes didn’t add any magical elements to Ever After, when it cried out for them. Horror movies, by nature, are already like fairytales. They contain magical elements, a clear line between good and evil, imagined creatures, and costumes (like Michael Myers utility jumpsuit and latex mask or Freddy’s knit sweater and brown fedora hat. What this movie needed was more Brothers Grimm and less paint-by-numbers. What we got was a suspenseless, over-long exercise in indie filmmaking that fell short of being a really scary fairytale all by itself.