I had a gap in my diary this evening which meant a quick dealve into the weird and wonderful section of my ‘to watch’ list on ‘Tubi’. And as soon as I saw the poster and title for this film in the suggested listings. I kind of just HAD to check it out to see whether it was ‘bad…’ or ‘BAD.’ Turns out…its actually not THAT bad…but its still kind of funky in places.

I’ll cut to the chase; ‘President Evil’ is essentially a low budget Comedy Horror movie thats basically just a beat for beat parody of John Carpenters ‘Halloween’ but with a guy in a Trump mask stalking Mexicans, Latinas, Black people and Trans people. With only some mild changes to the plot of ‘Halloween’ to help differentiate it a bit.

Instead of the film taking place on ‘Halloween’ night. it opens on the results night of Reagans second term and features a young kid called David donning a Reagan mask and killing is pornstar mother ‘Scorchy Daniels’. We fast forward, and its now the 2018 midterms and David escapes, picking up a Donald Trump mask now and tracking down a Latina family who are in the process of selling his family home.

Along the way there are references to SO many other horror films, from ‘Poltergeist’ to ‘Suspiria’ and ‘Young Frankenstein’ and I kind of struggled with this one a bit as to whether I found it weirdly watchable, or just painfully derivative.

My thoughts on the script go down one of two pathways. On the one hand, literally just cribbing the plot of ‘Halloween’ and replacing the all white cast with minorities and Michael with Donald Trump, alongside cameos such as one of the doctors at the hospital ‘David’ is being held in being called ‘Doctor Hilary’, the sheriff of the town this takes place in being called ‘Sheriff Schumer’ and Dr. Loomis being replaced with a ‘Putin’ lookalike. IS about as cheap, low and basic a script writing job you can actually do. Genuinely, this is the kind of movie where ‘It writes itself’ applies SO hard, because, once you’ve downloaded the original script for ‘Halloween’, changed the names, added a couple of comedy sequences in and a couple of scenes explaining how Trumps persecuting minorities…what ACTUALLY is original here? The answer is…not that much.

On the other hand, the comedy itself is INCREDIBLY diverse, primarily, its aiming for lowest common denominator, cheap pop culture gags and physical comedy. But then, and this is the weird part, in places the film gets weirdly lucid, bordering on a 4th wall break, where it feels like the script writers basically channelling their rage and fury about the situation directly to the audience using the character as a mouthpiece. and these moments are some of the most genuinely sincere, and at times bleakly hilarious moments of the film. self deprocating, scathing, black comedy about how the (then and now) president is harming communities by tearing US citizens from their families for LITERALLY no reason other than racist appeasement is VERY much present here, and it feels almost like the script writer is trying to stealth in Anti-trump rhetoric in between scenes of ‘David’ the Trump killer playing with a Putin lookalike in the woods, or deep cut ex-nazi gags.

Its so weird, because it feels almost like this was co-written between two VERY different people. One guy who just wanted to get a script in the can and hit Taco Bell before 6pm. and another guy who saw this as his one and only opportunity to put his opinions about the horrendous things going on in front of an audience, and decided that being sneaky about it was probably the better pathway. Its a bit jarring to tell you the truth because, when this thing is actually trying some of the more intellectually motivated bits, I found it actually kind of engaging and funny. But when its not doing that, its the worst excesses of American obnoxious style comedy and was border unwatchable. Not helped either by the fact they, at least a couple of times, go for low hanging fruit and do stereotyping, which I think here was intended to be taken as a ‘Im a lefty who KNOWS this is racist, and is essentially parodying the kind of guy who WOULD be racist’ but they dont really commit to the bit enough, which just makes it feel like they’re being weirdly out of tone and racist/transphobic/homophobic as a result.

That being said, regardless of the above, this is still fundamentally just a re-framing of a classic. and while its ABSOLUTELY nowhere near as good as the original ‘Halloween’ with its DNA being so close, its still kind of hard not to enjoy it to a point.

Other than that, this is pretty much your bog standard low budget horror film for the most part, the directions a bit shakey and not exactly ‘revolutionary’ but Richard Lowry is a pretty well established director for this kind of level of film making, and he commands his crew about as well as i’d expect for a production of this scope and budget. Not brilliant, by NO means the worst i’ve seen.

Cine? is actually kind of surprising. while the framing is great with a few instances of wobbly cameras, bad white balancing and ropey effects. I actually thought the lighting was handled very well for a production of this scope, the colour use was half decent and theres actually some pretty impressive sequence arrangements here. I wont say its brilliant at all, but it feels sturdy for the most part, the kind of film that isnt taking too many risks, but hey, you want a ‘Trump slasher flick’ this does exactly what it sets out to do.

The edit is a little all over the place, with a few wobbly cuts here and there and, as mentioned some of the effects work isnt great, though the big finale does handle itself quite well! Sequences are a little loose, but i’ve seen worse. its passable, but largely kind of unremarkable.

Performance wise? Sitara Attaie is actually VERY surprisingly decent as this films ‘Laurie Strode’ (here called ‘Lana’) she gets some of the best dialogue in the entire film and she absolutely embraces the tone and goofiness this films going for. I think she really nailed the brief, shes a great physical performer, emotes brilliantly and delivered her lines with conviction even in some of the sillier parts of the movie. She gave me Leslie Nielson vibes, which again. For a film like this?! surprised me.

That being said, Ryan Quinn Adams as ‘David’ the killer ‘Trump’ was equally fantastic, emoting with rubber in ways that I didnt know rubber could emote, He has some great comic timing on his physical performance that really engaged me. Could things have been pushed further? absolutely. But hey, this is low budget cinema. I’ll take a win where I can get it.

The soundtrack is essentially a ‘horrors greatest hits’ with soundalike tracks from classic horror movies from the 70s through the 2010’s. they usually use the music for comic effect, playing it in key moments where its ‘fitting’ for the scene. I wasnt too offended, it worked about as well as it could have honestly.

All in all? its a mess, its awkward, and the humours a minefield of gut laughs to just plain unfunny and offensive. But despite its flaws, there was something about this movie that just kind of…Charmed me, for lack of a better word. I think it may be the fact that there IS clearly SOME brains working on this thing behind the scenes, and that it plays itself as exactly what it is, without trying to be something its not. it comes in, does what it needs to do, and gets out. And I appreciate it when films dont try to ‘guild the lilly’ too much in that sense.

Would I recommend it?…possibly?! I think this one would have a very specific audience, but I think it could maybe pair up with something like ‘Wacko!’ or something similar. definitely one where your milage may vary. but there was enough to like here that I could see myself catching this one again.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/president-evil/