Review of Fear No Evil

Maybe it's just me, but I never imagined the Antichrist to be someone who gets straight A-test results, acceptance letters from all the acclaimed universities or allows himself to be bullied by high-school jocks who are obviously homosexual. What's wrong with this picture? On one hand Andrew Williams is a creepy adolescent who petrifies his father and even crippled his own mother, but other the other he's the main target of mockery at school. The continuous lack of logic and the giant leaps in coherence are the biggest defects featuring in "Fear No Evil". Well… those and the copious amounts of downright boring scenes, of course. The film benefices from a constantly strange and ominous atmosphere, but the plot is completely senseless and there's absolutely no excitement to enjoy until very late in the film (and even then the "horror" moments are still disappointing). Writer/director Frank LaLoggia's debut film was clearly inspired by the horror classic "The Omen", as both films revolve on a youthful Antichrist patiently preparing The Second Coming. His father, the dark lord Lucifer, was destroyed by a courageous priest but somehow he apparently managed to impregnate a woman before dying, and the fruit of her loins shall grow up developing curious powers that eventually will bring the world to an end. Meanwhile, an elderly female archangel desperately tries to recruit a young girl – one of Andrew's classmates – to assist her in the battle of good versus evil. Sounds interesting, huh? Yeah, well, it's not so much. The biggest difference between Antichrist Andrew Williams and Damien of the aforementioned classic "The Omen" lies in his character profile. Andrew is an introvert geek who sits on a swing at night and tolerates gay punks to make fun of his naked ass. He's not the least bit menacing and he doesn't nearly take enough advantage of the ungodly powers he inherited! Resurrecting dead corpses is one thing, but inflicting breasts on his archenemy?!? Is that the best you can do, Andrew? In between all the boredom, "Fear No Evil" contains a handful of intriguing sequences that actually make you regret the wholesome is not better. Notably the live outdoor community theater about the final days of Jesus Christ which suddenly turns a little too realistic, the gym dodgeball ending in tragedy and – last but not least – all the random school scenes guided by the soundtrack's terrific rock songs. There's "The Ramones", "Talking Heads" and even England's finest; "The Sex Pistols" with "Anarchy in the UK". This is probably also one of the only 80's horror films to feature an overload of gay slur and actually tries to make is sound cool. I don't know how different high-school was during the early 80's, but where I attended school it definitely wasn't cool for supposedly tough kids to make sexual advances to another guy in the shower… In fact, that was the type of stuff that would get you beaten up.