Canada, 2004
Review:JA Kerswell
Four years after a prank goes wrong, which triggered an inferno that killed a family, a group of graduating friends head for the woods to party … and die. Emerging from the dying ashes of the post-SCREAM (1996) teen slasher boom, ADAM & EVIL isn’t “the worst movie ever!” (as some armchair critics would have it), but it is far from the best either. However, for those who can make it through a fairly tedious first half, it delivers some goofy suspense and a doozy of a motive for its diminutive killer in its final moments.
Adam (Sean Arnfinson) is haunted by nightmares of that Halloween Night four years ago, when he accidentally caused a fire with a Roman Candle, killing a couple and their young daughter. Having avoided prosecution, Adam has confided in his girlfriend, Yvette (Lynsey Brothers), but he is not going to let guilt and trauma get in the way of a good party. The graduating class of some high school or other heads towards the remote Lake Nede Campground, but before they get there, they make a pit stop at the local country bar, where they bump into the Sheriff (Jodie Graham) and his cougar of a wife, Maureen (Allison Warnyca), who takes a shine to the lone virgin in the group, Seth (Kevin Robson). Maureen casually asks the teenagers if they knew of the murders of another group of teenagers that had happened at the camp some years previously, which left them looking like “spaghetti and meatballs”. In time-honoured tradition, this group pay no heed to the warnings and head, hooping and hollering, to the campground, where they are seemingly the only guests.
However, unbeknownst to them, Shane (James Clayton, under the pseudonym Clayton Champagne), the punk ex-boyfriend of one of the group, Yvonne (the film debut of future star Erica Cerra), has followed them in his van with a buddy to give them a jolly old scare. They also bump into Clint (Jeffrey Fisher), the creepy-looking groundsman, who looks at them creepily whilst fondling his garden shears. After they pair off for the night, the Sheriff’s wife slinks into the campsite and seduces Seth. However, after she leaves, someone enters his tent and slits his throat with a pair of garden shears. The next morning, the group don’t check on Seth and heads to the lake to swim, accompanied by the obligatory montage of watery frolics as a pop-punk song plays in the background. Unfortunately for them, the killer hasn’t finished pruning teenagers …
As soon as I saw the words ‘Splendid Film Production’ flash up, I suspected things might not be splendid at all. Admittedly, the flashback scene (which turns out to be a nightmare) in which a supposedly 14-year-old Adam watches the family burn to death because of his stupidity has a genuinely unsettling feel, with the little girl (actually the director’s daughter) staring through the flames impassively as her parents scream, or their faces shown grotesquely charred. However, when we are introduced to the group of identikit friends of both sexes—with their uniform tits and teeth—my heart sank. They all seem to share the same hive-like, vapid personality and horndog innuendo (with lines like “I don’t like sausage for breakfast” and “Wake up and smell the clam juice”). It doesn’t help that most of the cast deliver their lines with the same amount of passion as if they were reading the back of a breakfast cereal packet. This blandness is only exacerbated by the plasticky cinematography, the forgettable songs that erupt every five minutes or so, and the seemingly endless scenes of them frolicking around in bikinis and board shorts.
However, once the film moves past this teen-movie white noise and into proper slasher territory, ADAM & EVIL actually builds up something approaching a head of suspense. Look, I know it’s a teens-go-to-the-woods-teens-get-dead movie, and it has been done a gazillion times before (and better), but when it works, it works. Although everyone shouting over each other is a little grating in later scenes (and the hysterics really do highlight the differences in the cast’s acting abilities). Whilst not a forgotten classic—and thankfully devoid of any of the increasingly tired meta-commentary of the SCREAM films—it scores points for its increasingly ludicrous plot turns for those of us who like our teen slashers unapologetically stupid. In one scene, after realising half their friends are dead, the survivors think the best thing to do is split up, with one of the girls suggesting she go off with just the creepy groundsman for safety. Whilst the garden-shears-carrying killer has been taking notes from Cropsy in THE BURNING (1981), this is admitedly no gore fest, but what it lacks in gruesomeness it makes up for in sheer ludicrousness. The killer also favours a bow and arrow, and in the film’s loopiest death scene, manages to hit a bullseye that pierces two teens through the neck with a single arrow from the depths of the lake! Talking of the killer, in one scene, they flee the scene of a murder (shears in hand) with all the urgency of a pensioner doddering to the shop to buy a packet of Werther’s Originals. And it is the killer’s unmasking that really is the cherry on the cake, with a real huh of a motive (killing almost everyone apart from the person responsible for the fire), with even the surviving pair of teens giving a WTF? face.
ADAM & EVIL was shot in Vancouver (not the US, as sometimes reported) over 12 days on a budget of $300,000 in 2003 (I believe that is Canadian geese honking in the background of some scenes!). Director Andrew Van Slee told The Vancouver Sun that it was made as a direct-to-cable title (it aired on Canadian TV in November 2004) but secured a theatrical release in some European territories (including Italy, where it was released to 27 screens). Slee said, “It’s just your little classic horror film. It was shot on the cheap, but it got made, and people are watching it.” In the UK, it was released on DVD under the title HALLOWEEN CAMP 2: SCREAM IF YOU WANNA DIE FASTER. It was completely unrelated to HALLOWEEN CAMP (2002), which was a UK DVD retitling of BLOODY MURDER 2: CLOSING CAMP.
ADAM AND EVIL doesn’t quite live up to its ace punning title, but there’s worse out there. Believe me, I’ve seen them.
BODY COUNT 13:
Female 6 / Male 7
ADAM & EVIL (2004) Trailer
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