[Evilution]
Plot:A hostile alien intelligence, with the ability to possess a dead human body and resurrect it, is stolen by a young scientist, Captain Darren Hall, in hopes that he can find a way to learn from it while keeping it safe from a military that wants to program it as a bio-weapon.

Cast: Marie Antoinette, Nathan Bexton, Jonathan Breck, Greg Brown, Katie Cazorla, Tim Colceri, Esteban Cueto, Paul Darnell, Oliver Dear, Guillermo Díaz, Danny Downey, James Duval, Jeannie Epper, Joshua Lou Friedman, Noel Gugliemi, Lu Johnson, Jeffrey Scott Jones, Richard King, Jackson Lee, Mark Preston Miller, Billy Morrison, Eric Peter-Kaiser, Sandra Ramírez, Bruna Rubio, Peter Stickles, Ben Tolpin, Ricky Warwick, Bob Yerkes.

My Thoughts:Entertaining indie.

Review:"Evilution" is an indie scifi-horror blend from filmmaker Chris Conlee. The pic follows a military research experiment gone horribly wrong...(so what else is new?). When the U.S. military discovers a hostile alien intelligence, they naturally confine it, and then try and weaponize it. The attempt goes wrong however, and it unleashes the alien intelligence upon soldiers at a top secret military facility. The victims are turned into raving, flesh-craving lunatics, under the control of the alien intelligence which is inside them.

But in the movie, they basically come out looking like zombies. They have all the characteristics of zombies, so for this review, we'll call them zombies. At any rate, before a bomb is dropped upon the now ravaged facility, one young scientist escapes with his life, and a sample of the formula. Now, the scientist has moved into a tenement building in Southern California. Hoping to reconnect with the alien intelligence, and figure out where and how the experiment went so wrong. But soon, it's unleashed once again, and a new pandemic plague is born. Can he stop the new plague before it escapes the building?

"Evilution" doesn't necessarily take the trek that most movies like this would take. I watched it expecting a big scifi-horror military movie. Where a bunch of soldiers run around using tough-guy talk, and pumping rounds into hordes of zombies. But instead, the movie decides to go a different route with the story. Which is why it succeeds at being an entertaining piece. The films characters are also really diverse. We have the scientist guy Darren (Peter Kaiser), who in this environment of an urban slum, is completely out of his element in so many ways.

Then we have Random (Gugliemi), a hard-nose cholo (Mexican gangbanger), who leads a crew including himself and two other people, Killah-B (Diaz), and Asia Mark (Duval), the buildings macabre and strange manager (Bexton), and of course the resident Latina hottie Madeline, played by Sandra Ramirez. Rocker Billy Morrison also makes an appearance in the film as a thieving British junkie. The movie really has an urban L.A. feel to it, once the film moves past the opening few minutes, which really sets a tone for the movie with a bloody and action-packed zombie outbreak where the infected devour what's left of the facility's employees and scientists.

And the story moves along nicely once all the characters are introduced. The most intriguing character beyond Darren though is the buildings weird manager played by Nathan Bexton, who's last horror film before this was "Children Of The Corn:Isaac's Return". Bexton's character manages the building which is referred to as The Necropolitan. Although we're never told why, the building does indeed look very run down and gothic in some parts. "Evilution" is the first film of a supposed trilogy which is set to center around the building which Bexton's character informs Darren wasn't built on very "pure" grounds.

We don't see much of Bexton's character in the film though beyond a few scenes, which is a good thing because it builds up his mystique. Random, played by Noel Gugliemi, ends up getting shot in a drive by, and despite the rocky start that him and Darren have when they first meet, Darren agrees to give him the serum to save his life from the bullet wounds. Thus, the infection is born. But it's actually not Random who spreads it, but rather Morrison's character who sneaks in and steals the serum, and then thinking it's drugs, injects it into his bloodstream. Once he's turned, he proceeds to bite others, and well, you can guess what happens from here on out.

A building overrun with infected zombie-like people. And this pretty much screws up the romance between Peter Kaiser's character and Sandra Ramirez's character. It also screws up everything else, like people being safe and all of that. Considering the films premise, the horrific violence and bloodshed that occurs during the films second act and into the third act up until the end, shouldn't surprise anyone. We've all seen these "experiments gone wrong" horror films before. But this movie tweaks that a bit using Morrison's character as the catalyst for the outbreak.

Instead of just irresponsible researching being responsible for everything which takes place. The movie really makes sure to set up a scenario where the scientist himself is not responsible for the outbreak, but rather the irresponsible and careless people around him. The outbreak not only brings out some new characters into the movie, such as a military soldier sent by the government to find Darren and retrieve the formula, but it also puts the characters in a situation where enemies become unlikely friends and allies, all in an effort to survive the current disaster.

Blood and gore fans should dig this movie, as it has a lot of the red stuff, and some really gory and gross scenes with the usual flesh-ripping, biting, etc. that one would expect from a movie with zombie-like creatures. Some of the dialogue isn't very great though, and by the end of the movie, some characters have become extremly annoying. But the films writer seems to understand at what point certain characters would begin to become bothersome, and thus dispatches of them around those times. I have to admit, the writer when killing off characters in this film, seemed to really be in-sync with the viewer, in the terms of knowing when some characters would where out their welcome on screen.

The zombies themselves are pretty awesome also. They do a lot of running and jumping, but they also do the usual walking-with-out-stretched-hands-while-trying-to-grab-you stuff as well. Some of the zombies shuffle along, while others are some very atheletic mofos, and in most cases, it depends on the age of the person who's infected. The younger infected people move a lot quicker and are more athletic when chasing prey, while the older people who've been infected mostly grab or surprise attack their prey. A pretty interesting decision by the writer to implement that into the overall film.

And also the key to stopping the infected is yet another clever and interesting plot point, as it doesn't fall along the usual lines of axes to the head, bullets to the head, etc. The films ending though is a bit abrupt and strange, considering how the survivor decides to attempt to stop the outbreak. But the films final scene is very intriguing and ominous, and more than makes up for the aforementioned "wtf?" moment. "Evilution" is a film worth seeing for zombie movies fans, or fans of the horror/sci-fi stuff.

Positives:Well-written story, diverse characters, interesting antagonists in the zombie-like infected, and a modestly decent level of entertainment value.

Negatives:The dialogue in some scenes is too repetitive and cliche. And how the survivor of everything decides to try and save the day is really bizarre and disappointing.

Overall:Three and a half out of four stars.





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