I saw this movie at the Natfilm-festival in Copenhagen, Denmark. I was thoroughly unimpressed. Not true, there was actually one good thing about the movie: Malcolm McDowell. His acting is superb, he can play a maniac like few others and in this movie he is positively chilling. I also loved his performance in 'The Company', another horrible movie with a few good performances. It is sad that he can't find a good movie to invest his considerable talent in.
Back to the movie. The movie was presented by the director who explained, that he wanted it to be a parable on the collapse of communism and the disillusion, that brought with it. This explains, I think, to some extent what went wrong. He tried too hard. The script ended up being a mishmash of a fascination-with-serial-killers-horror-movie and a self-indulgent and trite piece of symbolism. One of the worst scenes is the interrogation scene, where the investigator confronts Evilenko and "battles with him on his terms". I don't think I have ever seen so many clichés and and so much half-digested pop-psychology forced into such an unnecessarily long scene. The dialogue is completely unbelievable and it certainly doesn't help, that it is, for the most part, delivered by utterly untalented people. Why the director chose to use Russian actors and dub them with second-rate voice actors is a mystery. Marton Csokas plays well enough, if a little wooden and the actress playing Evilenko's wife steals the frame in the few scenes she is in. Other than that the movie is a complete waste of actor wages.
In conclusion, I would like to say, that I think this movie gave me an understanding for the horror Evilenko's victims must have felt. I certainly couldn't get out of the cinema fast enough.
Back to the movie. The movie was presented by the director who explained, that he wanted it to be a parable on the collapse of communism and the disillusion, that brought with it. This explains, I think, to some extent what went wrong. He tried too hard. The script ended up being a mishmash of a fascination-with-serial-killers-horror-movie and a self-indulgent and trite piece of symbolism. One of the worst scenes is the interrogation scene, where the investigator confronts Evilenko and "battles with him on his terms". I don't think I have ever seen so many clichés and and so much half-digested pop-psychology forced into such an unnecessarily long scene. The dialogue is completely unbelievable and it certainly doesn't help, that it is, for the most part, delivered by utterly untalented people. Why the director chose to use Russian actors and dub them with second-rate voice actors is a mystery. Marton Csokas plays well enough, if a little wooden and the actress playing Evilenko's wife steals the frame in the few scenes she is in. Other than that the movie is a complete waste of actor wages.
In conclusion, I would like to say, that I think this movie gave me an understanding for the horror Evilenko's victims must have felt. I certainly couldn't get out of the cinema fast enough.