Welcome to Cult Corner where we dive through the bargain bins to determine if a movie is trash or treasure. Today’s pick… Tyler Glodt’s The Eves.
Cult Corner was designed as a way to take a look at the absolute bottom of the barrel. The entire point was to dig through the trenches for horror movies that are low budget forgotten relics, payed for with the lint in the director’s pockets and made with nothing but misguided enthusiasm. The perfect set of horrendous circumstances can deliver us a terrible movie that’s still strangely fascinating. I rate things on a “trash or treasure” scale because sometimes bad movies are still worth seeing, but hopefully even if they aren’t they’re still worth talking about. I’m looking for the bad movies that are weird and fascinating. I’m looking for the movies that you watch and wonder to yourself, “how the hell did this ever get made?” Unfortunately, The Eves is not one of these films.
Have you seen a slasher movie before? If so, then you know exactly what to expect with The Eves, give or take some pacing changes. A group of friends are going to the beach when their truck overheats and they must stop at a nearby house overnight. When night hits, a shadowy figure starts to pick them off one by one. Add in a bunch of PG sex scenes, some very brief nudity, some drugs, some drinking, and you have a rather familiar movie. This has The Texas Chain Saw Massacre written all over it.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that The Eves is a bad movie. In reality it’s not, it’s just a wholly uninteresting one. It’s fine. The movie’s not particularly good or bad, it’s just…fine. The biggest detriment to the film by far is the budget. There’s an overall cheapness to the film quality, the lighting, the acting, the color correction, and pretty much every technical aspect of the picture. The score sounds like it was made in Garage Band and the synthesizers used are incredibly cheesy. The sound mix never hits as hard as it should and the jump scares aren’t as effective ans they should be because of it. It effects the potential tension quite a bit. Same goes for a lot of the wonky lighting and especially the acting. There are several continuity errors, such as cutting back and forth between a scene that’s clearly shot at night and one in broad daylight. This whole movie just feels like a student film, and while that’s not a weird thing for Cult Corner, it’s sad to see it with this movie in particular.
I say that mainly because a lot of the other things going on are actually executed pretty well, and with more funding and polish behind it this could have been a relatively effective little movie, even in spite of the unoriginality. The cinematography is kind of nice, with some camera angles being fairly well set up and a lot of the shots featuring someone lurking in the distance bordering on kind of creepy. There are even several “found footage” style shots, which in spite of the terrible camera icons are well utilized. The camera itself even comes back as a plot element later on, which is smart. The writing in general is alright. The characters are nothing to write home about, but there’s enough mystery throughout the movie to keep interest and some of the leads are at least likable. The movie moves at a quick pace and I never felt bored.
The last act is the closest the movie ever gets to being great. When the twist and motivations are revealed and blood starts flying it’s actually genuinely intense. The acting in this part of the movie is as good as it ever gets and in many ways it reminded me of the ending to Scream. The only downside is that it may overstay its welcome once the cops get involved, but the resolution and final shot are still pretty good.
The Eves is a frustrating movie. Some of it’s good, some of it’s bad, but it’s just nothing special. It’s too well-made to be funny and it’s too low budget to be suspenseful. With some better execution, better lighting, a better score, and maybe some tighter editing this could have been a tense slasher flick. Unfortunately it’s just too middle of the road right now. It’s fine, and that’s about the best compliment I can give it. The movie doesn’t suck, but there are better films that are very similar so there’s absolutely no reason to watch this.
Here at Cult Corner we cover the weird and obscure. Given the low budget that these movies often have we feel the need to recognize that entertainment value and quality aren’t always synonymous. That’s why we have opted for the “trash or treasure” approach in lieu of a typical rating system. After all, Troll 2 is incredibly entertaining but it’s no 8 out of 10.
