You can easily forget bad movies, which you do not even resent if you do not remember them since same day you watched and they seemed like nothing. Nevertheless, the bad movies with squandered potential are what one dreads. It becomes annoying to see a movie completely falling apart when it had all the correct ingredients to be captivating. Unfortunately, this is the story of History of Evil—a pseudo-horror movie that should have been an entirely different film; for instance, its title is as misleading as the rest of it is abysmal. This is a mix of political thriller and haunted house horror elements like if The Shining and Children of Men had a baby but it overstates.
At some point in future America, after another civil war has almost brought down the nation as we know it and given rise to local militias enforcing a fascist dictatorship. Having spent several years in captivity, Alegre – a political prisoner and face of rebellion escapes reconnecting with her husband Ron and daughter back again. They are hiding out in an old plantation house with the help from one member of resistance called Trudy waiting for team that will extract them to “base camp”. But their hide-out also has its own past which starts creeping into Ron’s mind like Jack Torrance’s madness. That may sound nice but it isn’t.
There are good performances here—like Rhonda Johnson Dent’s stoic portrayal of Trudy—but no subtlety or complexity is allowed by this screenplay whatsoever. In fact, History of Evil just shamelessly represents itself as political allegory. From ‘The J-6 Authority’, named that way because January 6th; two thousand twenty-one was on everyone’s lips (we were talking about an organized militia) to retarded radio ads selling steroids with such lines: “Don’t be a cuck” power up.” No other film has everything written all over itself like this one does. It would be clear right away, however, from the opening text crawl:
This film is very much about telling; it’s not about showing. The movie has a lot of this kind of stuff, along with radio announcements and dialogue that seems unnatural. The script never really lets the viewer into its own world as if it does not have time to live in it or perhaps this might be a budgetary issue. It basically gives up on building any kind of world after half an hour and spends one full hour on Ron’s mental breakdown while using racism and misogyny as a sledgehammer to teach the audience that they are behind all evil. In fact, masculinity is the root of all evil—perhaps that’s where this movie goes next. It feels so banal when everything is said and done.
Ultimately History of Evil, becomes Ron’s story of grappling with his masculinity and place in society. He sees things in the house such as an old Klu Klux Klan wizard who feeds him pie and bourbon as well as indoctrinates him into macho culture. Now he questions risking his life for a political activist wife let alone following orders from anyone at all?
Paul Wesley is a talented actor, and he does the best with what he has to work with here, but sitting through this for an hour is so boring and fruitless as watching Ron become a Klansman who hates his wife. What about him being married to a powerful political leader, a life-time political activist who fought against fascists? Who cares?
The greatest flop in it was that it wasn’t emotional. We barely see anything of his wife and daughter (given the nature of this film as feminist), or even any encounter between them before he got back his wife. The story line is intriguing, yet these are not likable characters, neither to others nor to History of Evil. It simply seeks to achieve whatever its ideology happens to be.
This is such a black-and-white movie that it does not exaggerate when I say that every white person and all males are evil while every other person is good. This is how simplistic its politics are. We don’t know what they’re fighting against, or indeed what their political enemies stand for. There is one grandstanding speech at the end which sums up the whole thing – trying to be deep but ending up sounding very obscure:
One thing is certain—this film does not have any fear like this. The poster itself looks more terror-striking than anything you’ll get in here (the cheap knockoff American Horror Story ones). Regrettably, potential wasted again; another manifestation of ideologies taking precedence over the narrative or aesthetics of cinema
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