Audience Member
Deadfall (Vincent Di Meglio, 2000)
I never in my life thought I would say I liked anything that came from the bowels of Van Hook Studios, the effects team provided over by Kevin Van Hook, who has directed some of the worst Sci-Fi Channel Original Movies ever made. I now have evidence to the contrary. Vincent Di Meglio, one of Van Hook's effects wizards, started directing not long after he came on board with Van Hook with Deadfall, an homage to/ripoff of The Evil Dead that's actually watchable. Witty, even.
Plot: Dora (South of Heaven, West of Hell's Audrey Lowe), her boyfriend Stanley (The Dark Mist's Patrick Lawlor), and their friends Rudy (Wasteland's Brady Fischer) and Hope (Kirstin Leigh in her first screen appearance) head for Stanley's uncle's cabin in the woods for a few days of rest and relaxation. Rudy, who mainly spends time channel surfing, gets bored quickly and explores, discovering a mysterious locked box in the basement. He attempts to open it and fails, but manages to disturb the seal enough that what's inside the box knows something's out there that can let it free. When that happens, well, things get tough in the middle of the woods...
To call the plot familiar would be to do it a disservice; this is straight-up Evil Dead, with a box instead of a book and a change in gender for the Final Girl. Perhaps this is just naivete on my partâ"I can't imagine anyone would be dumb enough to think they could rip off The Evil Dead and get away with it, given how popular the movie isâ"but it seems more homage to me. Work with me here: di Meglio, by 2000, already had the might of Van Hook Studios behind him (and this wasn't a rogue piece, Kevin himself did visual effects on the movie despite VHS not being the film's production house), so he could have made a film with a much, much bugger budget than he actually did. But one of the truly endearing things about Raimi's flick is that it was made on a budget of, well, a few cases of beer. So is Di Meglio's, and that's what seals the âhomageâ? deal for me. But once you get past the similarities in the plot, there are differences to be had as well. Most notably, Di Meglio reverses the dynamic of the original film. The first half-hour of The Evil Dead was a textbook in creating suspense on film, and one of the few actually scary bits of movie I saw as a teen. Then come the monsters, and the movie immediately takes a shift into campy comedy. Di Meglio is writing what seems as if it may be a Big Chill-style dramedy in the first half-hour of this film, with relationship problems and big heart-to-hearts between the girls, then turns to straight horror when we actually get demons. It's interesting that where Raimi's tone shift was so out of character for films in 1982, Di Meglio's, which follows the seventies horror line perfectly, now comes as something of a shock.
Make no mistake, this is still painfully low budget, and no one in this cast is going to compete with Bruce Campbell as regards acting chops, but if you're a fan of modern crap-horror, this is a fun hour and a half you won't regret having spent. I've never seen a Van Hook Studios film about which one could say that. ***
Rated 3/5 Stars •
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Audience Member
Nice little Evil Dead homage.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
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