Let's Be Evil (2016) Reviews

• Well, this is the first time this year I said "Wtf was that?"

  peterp-450-2987162016-11-04

  "The past can define our future. But I won't let it." The opening scene of this sci-fi horror was promising. Even better, it was a snapshot that instantly caught my attention. A sublime and fascinating scene after which I snuggled in my cozy chair in anticipation for something magnificent. I was immediately convinced that this was going to be a hell of a movie. What did you expect? With a score like that on IMDb, this couldn't go wrong. The frozen image of a puzzled looking girl smeared with blood, seamlessly merged with a TV-show where we get the melancholic picture of a generation with no future. The education system needs to be changed so a new generation of intelligent young kids is being produced instead of a generation of obese and hopeless youngsters . The images looked futuristic with a suitable graphic design. And then the flashy google glass lookalike is introduced. A gadget we'll be watching through the rest of the film. Just recently I've seen "Jeruzalem" where they used the same kind of glasses. A disappointing film though. The only feat I was excited about was that high-tech device. Unfortunately this facet of "Let's be evil" became a rather annoying element to me. Even worse. I got so sick of it that I wanted to give up already halfway the movie. The rickety soundtrack was perhaps an omen. Admit it. If you want to create a futuristic movie, you shouldn't be using those stale Jean Michelle-Jarre polyphonic sounds. It felt as if I was watching a third-rate SF from the 80s. Unfortunately these weren't the only disturbing elements. When the end credits rolled over the screen I made my final conclusion. This was probably the worst thing I've seen this year. First, the overall picture you get to see almost the whole movie. The fact that it all happens in a virtual environment (the three selected candidates can only see by making use of the spectacles) was at first an exciting and interesting display. It all looked great and well-known (especially for those who sometimes sit behind a screen to have fun with some PC games), but it has one major drawback. After half an hour of hazy and swirling images, you gradually start to hate it. Biggest advantage is that a not so talented cameraman with virtually no experience gets away with it when some blurry and out of focus fragments appear in between. Combine this with a dark underground bunker where the lighting consists of pulsating lights in all sorts of colors and your irritation level is reached very quickly. It looked as if the whole story was set in a concrete submarine. And then you have the actors who were recruited based on some unknown requirements and who are participating in the Posterity Project. Judging from the conversations they have, the requirements concerning the level of intelligence needed for this job wasn't very high. Their ultimate function is to observe the group of teenagers that are also present in this underground facility (spending their days waving their hands in the air). And when necessary they accompany a lost teenager back to the group. Not exactly intriguing and exciting. The fact that the group of children organize a sort of artificial uprising afterwards in which they manipulate the electronic system in an incomprehensible way, was the start of a confusing outcome and a ridiculous denouement. Finally, the part that frustrated me the most. I had no idea what the theme of this movie was about. And in the end, I still didn't know it. Perhaps it's me getting older and a mild version of dementia sneaked in my system, but I couldn't make head nor tail of it. What was the opening sequence about and how did this correlate with the rest of the movie? And the end didn't clarify anything either. In a subtle way they tried to demonstrate the dangers of technologies and the way it's intertwined in our everyday lives. Kind of obvious. But eventually I still had a few questions about the film. Occasionally I like to watch a sophisticated film with a not so simple story line. But this was a level too high for me apparently. I suggest however that the creators of the IMDb website check their algorithms, because the score given to "Let's be Evil" is totally irrational. Or was there an artificial intervention by the makers of this movie? Well, that's a spooky thought! More reviews here : http://bit.ly/1KIdQMT

• Don't waste you time

  Badsharkmoviefan_1182016-12-13

  Seen this movie on Netflix it looked interesting. I came here to IMDb to find out a bit more info on it and noticed it's high rating and stupidly gave it a go. DO NOT BE FOOLED LIKE ME!!!!!! A lot of inflated ratings of 10 but this movie is rubbish. Basically the entire movie 3 idiots walk up and down a corridor with weird flashing lights and trying to act scared. I had no care if they lived or died in fact I wanted them all to die so this movie could finally end. Not really anything I can say that is actually good about the movie it had me somewhat amused for a while it's not scary and it is not even in the least bit thrilling or suspenseful. I can't believe I wasted my time watching this movie. I hope in writing this you will save yourself precious time and watch something worthwhile

• Poorly Stitched Together, and, Worse: Boring

  keelydbmail2016-12-17

  The artificially high star rating here can only be from family or friends of people who worked on this movie. Unfortunately, this film is as shoddy as the other written reviews here attest. The acting comes off flat (even when they're pretending to be frightened), but I'm not going to blame the actors for this-- that has to be the writers and director. The actors are given limited and cliché lines in the first place and then the shots are cut with unnaturally long pauses in between each actor's delivery, so that nothing flows. The overall 'cinematography' and disjointed story flow reminded me of one thing, but that one thing *exactly*: watching someone play a standard online PC game in POV. Right down to watching our character's POV as she hears someone scream, at length, in the next room over, and hmm-- Where is our character looking while this is happening? Top right corner of her room. Then top left corner. Then oh, look at the wardrobe for a while. Then at the wall. Back to the top right corner. Random, unnatural head swivels; just calmly gazing around in odd directions, bored and biding time until she feels like moving to the next step of this video game (though the voice-over is trying to convey panicked breath and confusedly calling out for the person who is screaming). Timing doesn't matter in this movie. Does she need to rush into the other room to see what's wrong? Nope, no rush! She can just wander around the rest of the facility wherever she wants (maybe smash a few pots Link-style), chat with another character, and when she eventually gets to the room-of-screams, that character will act like there was no delay on her part. At literally no point did this movie create tension for me. Like another reviewer said, the thin plot was dragged along so long I was HOPING for our protagonists to die so the movie could end. There are a few standard jump scares, which the movie broadcasts for you a good 20 seconds in advance so by the time you get there you're immune to any startle, and are just tapping your foot impatiently wondering when they'll get on with it. SPOILER: I couldn't help but laugh out loud when the man was lying on the ground, screaming as if in pain, when we could visibly see that the children were doing nothing but lightly patting him with their hands. It was like watching a man pretend to be killed by a pile of curious puppies who were barely touching him. /SPOILER Zero character development or emotional connection between audience and character. There's just nothing 'there', below the surface, of any character in the movie. They're nothing but moving mouths and hands for the words and actions they're given, and those words are *very* limited and uninspired, and the actions are *very* basic and often unnatural. There's just nothing and no one to connect to in this movie. I'll give them that the ending wasn't *totally* predictable, but it also isn't as neat as I think it thinks it is. I can certainly imagine a few scenarios that make sense of it, but it's left unexplained within the movie. There is too much wrong with every scene to give a blow-by-blow. Just... don't waste your time. At least, not based on the artificially high star rating on this site. Read the reviews first. PS: One personal gripe. There's a frustrating old toad of a scene in here (minor spoiler ahead) that is such an overdone cliché and seems to suggest that people who live in movie universes consider normal what most of us would consider brain damage. That is, when our protagonist tries to tell her coworker that she's seen specific, disturbing things (including a written message on a bathroom door), her coworker *immediately* jumps to the "Oh, you're in a new environment; it's perfectly normal for you to be having incredibly specific audio-visual hallucinations" write-off. ...WHAT? In what universe do dialogue writers live, that they think humans dismiss each other like this? These characters, in-universe, are wearing glasses that create visual projections, but the character doesn't even jump to *that* as an explanation (suggesting some kind of glitch, etc). She just goes straight to the old "You just have nerves, being in a new place and all" chestnut, as if that would ever be a plausible reason for someone to visually hallucinate a message on a bathroom door. If you think your coworker is hallucinating messages on bathroom doors, that's not a moment to celebrate that that's *all* it is-- that's a moment to help her seek medical help! But writers keep using this as if it's a reasonable human interaction, which it isn't, and it's aggravating.

• Too many unanswered questions

  happychick-520142016-12-22

  Who, what, when, where, these are basic questions that a film must answer in order to make any kind of coherent sense. This film fails to provide adequate details, and no amount of beautiful lighting technique can fix that problem. The dialogue is terrible, the sort of dialogue a high school drama class might write during a class-room acting exercise. Three young-adults accept a job to supervise gifted children in an underground facility. The young-adults do not ask any questions about the assignment, as they need money, and all willingly accept a non-disclosure agreement. Upon entering the facility they use augmented reality glasses to see, as the facility has no lighting (with the exception of a predictably limited number of defective emergency flashlights). They are also provided with a virtual artificially-intelligent guide (that later we learn was constructed and controlled by the gifted children). For a brief portion of time it appears that one of the young-adults is having hallucinations but we soon discover that the vision their glasses provides is being interfered with by the gifted children. The gifted children attempt to frighten the young-adults and the young-adults attempt to escape the facility with one child whom they believe is not aggressive like the others. Eventually it is revealed (predictably) that the child they are trying to escape with is leading the others and has augmented reality contact lenses (the most unexciting twist I have ever seen). Two of the young-adults appear to be killed by the children. The remaining one seems to begin the movie at the start again, perhaps suggesting that the young adults were either VR AI or prisoners being mentally manipulated. Questions! Why are they children in the underground bunker? Corporate experiment, government experiment, this is just how the future of childhood will be, none of these answers are provided....Why does one of the young-adults return to the beginning of the movie? Was she an AI the children created as part of their augmented reality, was she a human prisoner being continually brainwashed to repeat the game..... What is the point of the children's play-time? Is this part of their training, is this part of their recreation, why choose that particular game instead of say tennis.... What time period is this set in? It's not the past, but that is about all we can assume.....Where is this set? In space, on earth, on mars, there are very few visual or verbal clues. We know that they are in a bunker, but if the adult characters are all VR then the location could be anywhere..... Where are all the adults (and do they know what is happening to their kids)? Do they receive false communications from their children, do they approve of their children's education, have they been forced to give-up their children to the boarding-school system, do the children even have parents or were they grown in a lab. Assuming that an audience will be able to infer the authors intentions without a sufficient amount of semiotic evidence, causes the audience confusion and frustration.

• Lots of Unrealistic Votes?

  moviegoermagician2016-10-27

  I don't know how this gets an 8.5. I looked a few weeks ago and it was 4 out of ten. It's terrible! Very low budget, awful cast and writing. The direction, well, it's poor at best. I'd urge everyone to watch this for as long as you can take it, then vote HONESTLY what you think about it. The vast majority of votes gave it a 10 out of 10. I just don't get it! There are far superior 'horror' movies out there's that struggle to get over 5/10 so I'm flabbergasted. This is literally one of the poorest attempts at horror or even psychological thriller out there. Not sure if this is a spoiler or not, but this movie sure spoiled my afternoon and robbed me of a couple of hours I won't get back!