I recently raved about a film called “Basement Jack”, and I’ve since been lucky enough to see its prequel “Evilution”. This gruesome epic follows award-winning actor Eric Peter-Kaiser (performing with the charm and skill of a young Ted Raimi) as military doctor Darren Hall (Dan Cain and Herbest West all in one). Darren was last seen working with some mysterious samples to create a cure for death but following a botched experiment was forced to abandon his zombified Iraqi outpost and flee back to America. Now at home in The Necropolitan, Darren attempts to perfect this cure while dodging military assassins.
Inevitably things go from bad to pleasant (there’s a bodacious love interest), to bad to worse, and then finally: Boom! Welcome to zombie town. We climax with a swarm of infected tenants ripping through everything that stands in their way including comical body builders, street gangs, junkies, improperly dressed young ladies and dotty old women gone bad. Only Darren has the know-how to try and reverse the effects of his experiments on the community and save the day. There’s a twist too!
“Evilution” is every bit as entertaining as its slasher counterpart “Basement Jack”, but it remains its own monster. There’s been a recent surge in this style of doomsday film with re-makes, spins-offs, sequels, adaptations (28 Days/Weeks Later, Day of the Dead, Doomsday, Diary of the Dead, I Am Legend, Resident Evil, Dead Set…) racking up DVD sales, but I’m pleased to say that “Evilution” owes nothing to this trend. Writer Brian O’Toole has named “Dawn of the Dead” as his favourite film, and that influence can (arguably) be seen within “Evilution” in that there’s something decidedly “old-school” and classic about its structure and content. “Evilution” is not a flavour of the week - rather it is a witty and intelligent horror movie with well-placed gore around the edges. This is one for true fans of horror.
I don’t like to press the “Hype Button” with a couple more features like this and Black Gate Entertainment could really prove themselves to be the future of horror. You have been warned.
P.S Nathan Bexton is a horror-icon in the making. You heard it here first!
