Netflix is always a good place to go for a film and they seem to be pumping out more and more Netflix originals. Little Evil was one I’d seen on there a few times but just skipped past without a second thought. Then a few weeks ago I took notice of the trailer and thought it may well be worth a watch, so when I was bored one day and looking for something to watch I thought why not give it a go, question is was it worth it?
Director – Eli Craig
Writer – Eli Craig
Stars – Adam Scott, Evangeline Lilly, Chance Brown, Owen Atlas, Bridget Everett, Marcus Terrell Smith, Russ Mitchell and Sally Field.
Run Time – 94 minutes
Tagline – Samantha is his dream. Lucas is his nightmare.
Trivia – When Al mentions that his stepson always wants to watch the Pitch Perfect movies, everyone reacts negatively. That includes Larry, who’s played by Donald Faison, who appeared in Pitch Perfect (2012).
Trivia – Sally Field and Eli Craig are mother and son.
The premise of the film is simple Gary has married Samantha and has taken on the roll of step dad to her young son, the problem is Lucas is one creepy little bastard. So creepy in fact that Gary comes to believe he’s the son of the devil himself. Details of his Father are sketchy at best and to add to that people around him start to die. Gary finds Lucas doing all sort of off the wall things, he has a goat sock puppet he talks through, he sits on the kitchen table in pitch black night, the list is endless.
Gary however wants to make things work, so after a while he attends a meeting of step dads. In there he meets a few new friends and Gary starts to think maybe Lucas isn’t that bad but he is. So with the help of his step dad work friend Al who is a woman in the lesbian relationship they decide to try and work out how to cure Lucas.
Their adventures take them on a journey to meet a few oddball characters who seem to have knowledge of Lucas’s birth and how to stop him. The journey to the end is a lot funnier than I expected helped mainly by the Al character, I must admit though this character is very hit and miss and I could see why someone would not like her.
There’s some good twists and turns although they’re mostly predictable in a few areas. Everything leads to Gary teaming up with his fellow step dads to save Samantha and her spawn of Satan.
The Good
- Adam Scott as Gary, I really like his comedic acting he was greats in Parks and Rec and really good in Krampus. He’s backed up by Evangeline Lilly as Samantha who is always strong and Clancy Brown as the dodgy priest. I thought everyone in this film gave good performances.
- Obviously to succeed as a horror comedy you need some decent humour, usually this is done by having over the top gore splattering everywhere. Little Evil however is not gory at all, as such it’s jokes need to be bang on and for the most part they were.
- Pacing is important in any film and this is another thing they nailed, there’s a nice build up of Lucas acting creepy and an explanation as why Gary didn’t notice before his marriage.
- We keep hearing about the disaster of Gary and Samanatha’s wedding day for a while, I thought the scene where their wedding woes were revealed was the funniest part of the film.
- Side characters! I always like a film to have decent fun side characters. It should be relatively easy to make main characters how you want them to be but harder to have good characters when they only appear on screen for a few minutes. I loved Gozamel the demon hunter.
The Bad
- The most unrealistic part of this film is how Gary managed to pull Samantha in the first place but given what’s happened in her past maybe it’s not as surprising as you’d think.
- There’s only a couple of out there moments with Lucas, sure we get some creepy glimpses into him but I feel there could have been a couple more really odd bits for him in there.
I think this is worth a watch if you have a spare hour and half one Sunday afternoon. There’s only a handful of laugh out loud moments but the whole tone of the film is pretty amusing throughout. Add some decent acting and a really good overall premise that hasn’t been done before in a comedy horror environment and this is worth your time. Also it’s on Netflix so it’s not like you have to pay to watch it!
Overall Rating – 7.5/10
Acid Horrors 