I wonder if this movie would have the small cult rep it has if not for its strange backstory, with a drug-addicted director dragging out its production, then its post-production for years...even past his own death. Probably not. "The Evil Within" is half striking but unpleasant surreal psychodrama with an unappealing, mentally-challenged protagonist, half routine suspense drama with bland romantic leads and underdeveloped supporting characters imperiled by a killer.
The two elements don't mesh well, which is problematic because there's a very good premise (the notion that characters might unknowingly enter a nightmare from which they may never wake) that the film could have done a lot more with stylistically and structurally. The dream elements are limited to occasional scenes when they ought to gradually "infect" the entire narrative. There is a mean-spiritedness to making the "mongoloid" protagonist so dislikable, even as he's victimized, and the casting of what feels like soap-opera actors as his brother and the latter's fiancee keeps "The Evil Within" lurching between the grotesque and the rather dully earnest. You can see what the movie is aiming for, a kind of marriage of Tim Burton and David Lynch--horror at once cartoonishly external and disturbingly dug-up-from-the-subconscious.
It doesn't quite pull that off, but the attempt still has enough personality of its own to make this an intriguing one-shot by a director one would have liked to see get his act (and vision) together on other projects. Though of course "Evil" probably wouldn't be as strange as it is if he'd been stable enough to do just that.
The two elements don't mesh well, which is problematic because there's a very good premise (the notion that characters might unknowingly enter a nightmare from which they may never wake) that the film could have done a lot more with stylistically and structurally. The dream elements are limited to occasional scenes when they ought to gradually "infect" the entire narrative. There is a mean-spiritedness to making the "mongoloid" protagonist so dislikable, even as he's victimized, and the casting of what feels like soap-opera actors as his brother and the latter's fiancee keeps "The Evil Within" lurching between the grotesque and the rather dully earnest. You can see what the movie is aiming for, a kind of marriage of Tim Burton and David Lynch--horror at once cartoonishly external and disturbingly dug-up-from-the-subconscious.
It doesn't quite pull that off, but the attempt still has enough personality of its own to make this an intriguing one-shot by a director one would have liked to see get his act (and vision) together on other projects. Though of course "Evil" probably wouldn't be as strange as it is if he'd been stable enough to do just that.