Scolding Review: Lurking Evil

I had this once. In the Scruffydragon Forums mostly.

Being a reviewer is weird now that everybody's a critic. I don't really honestly expect my opinion will actually sway you against watching an affront to all that is good like King of Fighters. In a weird way we've  come around to admiting that this shit is a mite bit personal, and that maybe my advise about Terminator Salvation is pointless if you're, say, a Terminator completist or some kind of Moon Bloodgood whore.

So the question I'm posing is,  Are we giving points for effort? You see, my sister bought one of those DVD packs with a dozen lame movies nobody would have bought on their own, full of bad camera angles and killers who  never show up and those stupid endings where everyone gets killed. 

And among these, they put Lurking Evil.

1994? Holy shit, my first guess put this near the 70s!

Lurking Evil is not like these other films, and I suspect it benefits from being surrounded by these other terrible films. Who puts a low budget 90s movie among  0 budget  2k films? Oh, it's not great. However, it is a movie, which is more more than I can say of many of it's bundle-buddies.

The film starts of with two sisters  having a discussion on  what seems to be  some kind of dilapited castle. You see, one sister, which had a baby recently, really wanted the other one to carry a gun, while the second one was understandably worried about packing a piece near a baby.

For you see, these sisters, aren't in castle Fankenstein by accident, but are instead hiding from some kind of unseen horror.  Eventually said horror  peeks it's scraggly hands through a barricade and uses a wire hanger to  pull the baby's crib out to itself. Trust me, a wire hanger is not strong enough to drag an ANYTHING. My sister leaves her keys in her car a lot, I know what I'm talking about here.

 

Steve Tyler's family reunion.

The Pro-gun sister steps in for the save, but she gets bloodied and dragged away for her trouble. Hey, I know the topic of guns in America is a divisive subject, but nobody disagrees that the one advantage they have over knives is not having to get close enough to your enemies to get folded up like a clean towel.

We get  credits, and  as you'd expect, there aren't any names you know in there except HP Lovecraft. Apparently this movie's plot is based by one of Love-C's short stories. I wouldn't know if this is accurate or now, because I'm holding on  on reading Lovecraft's collected works . It's on my list, under all the Harry Potter movies, Game of Thrones seasons 1-2, and Angel Blade Punish.

 

I'd like to think the animators don't actually know how many penises a woman has.

The we meet our hero, a rough and tumble former criminal accused of a crime he didn't commit, just as he's coming out of of doing time.  He heads to his closest living relative, who runs the funeral home, and has hidden some drugs and money on   corpses  that our hero is to unearth and sell. But unknown to him, some thugs, a boss, a femme fatale, and a big guy, come immediately after he leaves and force the funeral home guy to tell them about the drugs.

Let's put this one in the refrigerator I stuff all my other drugs in.

We also meet the surviving sister from the prologue and some guy who looks like a young Emile Hamilton from Man of Steel. They talk about their plan to kill the ominous things by blowing up a church. Both of them, and a pregnant lady convene in the church, with a reverend who's not fully in favor of destroying  his working place.

I think the pregnant lady is bait, because honestly if she has any other use here we never see. If I were pregnant in a town full of monsters why...well it'd probably be too late if even the men are pregnant. But, you know, I'd take my monster baby and get the hell out.

So the drinking game is you're supposed to take a drink every time the existence of a monster is driving you mad.

They're mostly done wiring up the place to blow when our hero stumbles upon their cemetary, trying to find his drugs.  The sister kidnaps him at gun point.

But then the thugs show u, kidnap our hero AND the church crew. All that they want is to find their drug corpse. Femme Fatale does show an interest in pregnant lady, asking her who her "gone" baby-daddy was so she could kill him. However, she seems  have some emmity with the sister.

I just want to lick your baby's feet as he comes out. Is that so bad?

They finally drag hero out to dig his granma's corpse, which presumably has the drugs. But then not only does it not have the drugs, but the tomb caves in, and  our hero is carried by the monster, which is basically the Cryptkeeper from tales from the  crypt after staring too much at the sun.

Our hero somewhat or somehow escapes through an inner barricade built to keep out the monsters, upon which all of them see the monster, so we don't have to put up with any more minutes of people not believing in a monster the audience knows is real. The muscle exclains it might be  a bear. You know, one of those famous underground, lanky, furless bears we've all seen on TV documentaries.

However, instead of bailing out on the whole thing, our crime boss thinks it's a good idea to keep searching for the gold.  Muscle gets dragged out of  a tinted glass, which, while probably painful, is a lot classier than getting dragged out of a regular  old glass window.

"I'm not a bear, I'ma twink! Learn your gay sub-groups!"

The explosion crew and hero-man  turn the tide on their captors, and soon have them tied up to the walls. The reverend tries to bargain with the monster to kill him and not everyone else, and tells the monster he's gonna get a good parking space in heaven. The monster tells him God is Satan and rips out his heart.

Tim Burton's Les Miserables.

Sister goes out to get a gasoline truck, heroman 's distracted by Femme Fatel long enough for  crime boss to get out, and  Emil Hamilton gets killed, failing to keep Pregnant lady from getting dragged off underground.

Birthmark, or just a bad burn.

It all comes to a head underground, where the monsters are patiently waiting to eat pregnant lady's baby as soon as it plops out. There doesn't seem to be a reason, but I don't see a reason to take the peel off a grape either. They're the experts on baby eating, I'll defer to their judgement.

Crime boss and Hero fall in, and the monsters are all for eating them now. Except Hero's related to them somewhat, thorugh his birthmark, a steak shaped coloration between his shoulder and his arm. He manages to escape by, and you trust me that no one questions it, lighting an severed arm on fire, and he kind of brings along the pregnant lady and the sister. Crime boss sees his sought after drugs and money and gambles to try and stay here.

"I don't know how I knew it was going to work.

The  sister brings with a gas-truck, and blows the whole damn thing off. All the monsters are killed. The end,

So, you see, maybe in another context, I wouldn't give a crap about some 90s  low-budget horror film. Certainly not enough to write about it. But In the context of this one night, where the other horror movie I watched was 70% "People talking about dull stuff in broad daylight" , it is worth considering. Context is everything, and I can't recommend you watch a shitty movie, just so you can make this shitty movie look better.

So if you're interested in a movie that has action and monsters, and some semblance of a plot, Lurking Evil is kind of that, I guess?  But there's certainly better movies with better action and better monsters. So I guess it depends on how much you love monsters and action vs how much you don't love poor editing, obvious sets, bad acting and senseless story. Do whatever you want, I'll go watch Pacific Rim again.