
‘History of Evil’ is as tedious as it sounds, this is a film that touches upon a lot of current issues yet doesn’t really focus on any one thing. Quite clearly, there is a growing trend of motion pictures tackling social issues that divided the population throughout the 2020s decade, credit must be given to Alex Garland’s upcoming flick titled ‘Civil War,’ but probably this ‘Make America Scared Again’ subgenre is more focused on adding more to the cinematic palette than the political one. Looking for a central conceit in “History of Evil” is like looking for a needle in a haystack, and honestly, it is not worth time and energy at all.
The kernel itself is a southern take on “The Shining.” It is not the ghosts of the Overlook Hotel who possess a seemingly nice man, but the hate that exists in this country. Said man is Ron (Paul Wesley) and he imagines a very bleak future. He is two thousand forty-five years old, and in the beginning of the film it is indicated to the audience through a crawl that the world has been split in two and is ruled by right-wing evangelical extremists who act as pseudo militia entities seeking to annihilate nonbelievers in what now is called the ‘North American Federation’. In the movie introductions, Ron is part of the Resistance but at the beginning of the film, he gets into some trouble trying to transfer his wife, glaringly beautiful and dangerously defiant, Alegre (Jackie Cruz), his daughter Daria (Murphee Bloom), and his friend Trudy (Rhonda Dents) across an enemy Barricade. Alegre is a state terrorist, with radical ideas who is No. 1 on the wanted list. They do need to get her to some secure place but that means staying put in some derelict building while being evacuated.
And that’s how ‘History of Evil’ does not just become a thriller, but also a supernatural cautionary warning. Apparently the old house is inhabited by the spirit of an elder member of the Ku Klux Klan who effectively brainwashes Ron while they are both waiting to be saved and hiding from the nearby militias. Imagine the bartender in ‘The Shining’ was an old racist man, and that is a little of what writer and director Bo Mirhosseni is trying to portray here how this nation’s violent history has a detrimental effect on people’s ideologies.
While it is a good concept, the actual making is a different matter. Most noticeably, the acting is consistently subpar, assisted by the insipidness of the dialogue and the overall illogical nature of the plot. Cruz and Dents are the worst as they do not appear to be busy with anything alternative than being idle off-camera till it is time to portray the protagonist’s breakdown. Wesley, on the other hand, is unable to nail the tone that corresponds to the circumstances that should portray a descent into madness. He tends to appear disappointed more than stunned or deformed. A Southern Gothic portrayal of this story is also necessary. A nightmare that tells a story about a man who lost his mind and heart due to the accumulated evil that has been rampaging through his entire life. Nothing has substance. It is absolutely ridiculous that it is exactly what unable to make work.
This is yet another one of those annoying films that portrays people in a particular way. There is a part in the movie where one of the supporting actors informs the main characters why people hide in that particular house, only for the main characters to come back and ask “WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD PEOPLE DO THAT?”. Even worse, there seems to be, so to speak, some kind of inhibition in Mirhosseni when it comes to his concepts. It is not so uncommon to suggest that such ideas belong to people who are considered evil and progress as a result. It’s quite unfortunate that the move is, in a way, excessively bowing down to its fundamental flaws as a result of this line of thinking.
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