Evil (To Kako) (2005)

When it comes to countries that churn out horror movies, or shall I say zombie movies, Greece probably isn't the first place that springs to mind. That is probably because Evil is the first zombie flick to come out of Greece; well, it's the first one that I know of anyway, so don't jump down my proverbial throat if I missed one!

A ridiculously simple plot involves three road workers that discover a cave whilst working, because that always happens. You know, you're doing your job, when all of a sudden you find a bloody great cave. Ok, so it could happen...

Anyway, whilst wandering about the cave the workers become infected by an unseen force. The action then flashes forward to the trio going about their daily business, with no recollection of how they got out of the cave. This is a minor worry though, and one that want bother them for long, as they soon turn into flesh eating zombies and start attacking whoever is near enough to take a chunk out of. Then, in quite poosibly the quickest transformations I have ever seen, the attacked start attacking other folk, and so on. Before you know it downtown Athens is overrun by the bloodthirsty critters.

Some of those that haven't been infected initially put the craziness down to over enthusiastic football (soccer) fans having a wild time. That is of course until they see them attacking and eating people. So, a small band of mis-matched Athens residents try to get out of town. Well, I gather that is what they are trying to do, they seem to go around in circles to me. Cue lots of fight scenes, plenty of gore and a dodgy strain of humour; some of which worked, some of which was lost on me.

First off, let me just say that this certainly isn't the worst zombie movie I have ever seen. Oh no, there are some real barrels of crap out there which this is no where near as bad. The trouble is it is by far not the best either. Having a low budget doesn't really appear to be the problem here as the gore effects I thought were bloody good, and damned amusing in places too. No, the real problem for me was that the story never seems to really go anywhere, a fact that really isn't helped by some incredibly disjointed dialogue and poor attempts at humour within the script. This could, admittedly, be put down to poor subtitling or cultural differences, but I get the impression that the humour was just poor.

Nothing is explained about the why's and wherefore's, not that that is really an issue, but some kind of reasoning might have been hinted at. Maybe the dodgy Greek sewage system finally gave up the ghost? Who knows?

Evil for me was no more than a mildly enjoyable splatterfest, and they really do throw the gore at us. I can't really bring it upon myself to recommend it on any other level. So if you like zombie flicks, and I mean the good, the bad and the terrible of the genre, or just a gory movie, then you might get some kicks out of this. Other than that, you're probably better off with something else. I just hope that writer/ director Yorgos Noussias comes up with a better script for his next project; he's nailed the more visceral side of things, now all we need is a decent plot, and some decent acting to accompany it.

Rating 2 stars (out of 4)

Review by Jude Felton