Overall Rating
  Awesome: 67.74%
Worth A Look: 18.28%
Average: 6.45%
Pretty Bad: 7.53%
Total Crap: 0%
3 reviews, 75 user ratings
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| Evil (Ondskan) |
by Jason Whyte
"'It may be a silly teen bullying movie, but damn, who is this kid?'"

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What's funny about "Evil" is no matter how silly this movie is, it is very noteworthy for the mere presence of lead actor Andreas Wilson, who plays a troubled kid thrown into some pretty awful bullying at a prep school. I jumped over quickly to the Internet Movie Database to find some info on this young actor, and, shockingly, this is his only work so far, and I really see this guy making it in the future. The Vancouver Film Festival guide calls him a brooding cross between Leonardo DiCaprio and James Dean. I can agree there. It's just too bad that his solid work is in a wholly unrealistic, goofy project that keeps getting more unrealistic with every passing reel.Set sometime in the 50's, Wilson plays Erik Ponti, a troubled kid whom, when we first see him, is beating the pulp out of a local school kid. These acts of violence appear to come from his father, who still believes in the old whip/wooden-spoon child discipline. Erik has no other choice but to go to Sjarnsberg school, which seems okay at first...he gets on a swim team and makes good friends with his bookwormish mate.
Everything seems okay, until we meet the men in the Upperclass, who control and can rule the lower students. Bad idea, as a minor slip-up can result in a beating, or humiliation, or both. So much as a talk-back to these men can result in explusion, and for the by-my-own-rules Erik, this is not going to be good.
When things do lash out against these "lesser" kids, the film spirals out of control. Beatings, impalings, feces, blood...and at a constant rate, we pretty much get the point that the Upperclassmen are bad, very very bad....but then the film keeps subjecting us to endless brutality segments, all to an ignorant administration who would never turn such a blind eye, not even in the 1950's. And all the way until the ending, there's hardly an original idea present -- last minute lawyers, facing up to the terrible father, forbidden girlfriends making children out of wedlock -- it's all here."Evil" is directed well enough and, again, the lead performance by Andreas Wilson is memorable. But the film just loses its balance and frequently goes to shock mode instead of thrill mode.
del.icio.us
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=8229&reviewer=350 originally posted: 09/27/03 18:06:59
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OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2004 Palm Springs Film Festival. For more in the 2004 Palm Springs Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2003 Vancouver Film Festival. For more in the 2003 Vancouver Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2004 Leeds Film Festival. For more in the 2004 Leeds Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2005 Atlanta Film Festival For more in the 2005 Atlanta Film Festival series, click here.
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USA 10-Mar-2006 DVD: 27-Jun-2006
UK N/A
Australia N/A
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