Reel Advice, by Steve Anderson

Insight of Evil
**
DVD

Directed by
Nigel Hartwell

Written by
Nigel Hartwell

Cast
Anthony Cortese
Tiffany Edwardsen
Chris Simis
Annie Pantusa
Mike Bruce

The Asylum, working its way toward being the Full Moon of the new millenium, brings us a murder mystery intermingled with vengeance from beyond the grave in Insight of Evil.

First off, I give The Asylum some due credit for making a truly foreboding menu for Insight of Evil. The music is very appropriate, and the distorted nature of the footage running behind the menu options lends that extra note of terror to the proceedings.

Even the distorted voice overs in the background force one to wonder, just what IS it we're about to watch here?

If only the movie could have lived up to the high expectations the menu established.

So what we have here is the story of a troubled high school, which pretty much sums up the whole state of public education these days. But Watertown High School has more troubles than the ordinary. All of Watertown's troubles start when one of Watertown High's students, Tanya Beach, loses her twin sister. And the girl's not dead...not that we know of, anyway. She's disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

But Tanya's not letting the vanished sister get in the way of high school antics, no sir or ma'am as the case may be. Tanya packs it up, against her mother's wishes, to go to a party with her friends in the midst of a lakeside cottage---

--ooooooh boy.

We all know where this is going, don't we? High school kids having uncondoned parties unsupervised at lakeside cottages never ends in a body count of less than three.

This will be no exception.

This cabin is the site of a really nasty murder scene that took place a few months prior, and currently holds one very pissed-off ghost.

And this ghost isn't going to be in a mood to drink 151 Rum and shake the proverbial ghostly booty to the newest Eminem song. No, there's going to be killing, and lots of it.

It's truly a wonder that, by now, movie studios haven't managed to think up any better premise for slaughtering promiscuous and rebellious teenagers. It's always some ghost / monster / maniac lurking in the woods / empty lot / abandoned amusement park / creepy roller disco looking to avenge the wrongs / slaughter the living that remind it of a past injustice of months / weeks / one thousand years ago.

You'll notice a lot of slashes in that last paragraph. No coincidence, because there are also a lot of slashes in Insight of Evil.

Never mind that the cast includes such bold type archetypes as: "The Troubled Teen," "The Party Girl," "The Drug Dealer," "The Player," The joke is, I'm not kidding. The characters are introduced by brief placards of text inserted in the film.

I'm going to admit, though, that there are a couple of good, solid shocks built into Insight of Evil. Bloody footprints just showing up for no apparent reason, things jumping out from behind, that sort of thing. They're scares, and despite their ultimately trite nature, they never really go out of style.

Strange how cheap shots never die.

The worst part is, I can't even TELL why the movie's CALLED Insight of Evil. If they really wanted to give us a better idea of what the movie was about, they could have just called it "Moron Teenagers Who Never Learn Killed By Yet Another Strange Thing."

But then, that wouldn't fit on the box very well, now would it?

The ending is a strange moulange of events, and while it's not exactly the best way to end things, being a bit on the confusing side, it does have a lot of unique charm to it. There's even a mild twist ending that'll leave you a little surprised.

At least until the music video kicks in.

Seriously, folks--the credit roll has a music video running in the background. What an incredibly STUPID move this was. Running a music video over the end credits is a move that verges on pandering, and it's a slap to the face of the audience to have to sit through this self-indulgent crap.

The special features include a promotional trailer and teaser for Insight of Evil, a theatrical trailer (this was apparently in theatres at one point!) the music video again, deleted scenes, and trailers for "Red Right Hand," "Pandora Machine," "The Fanglys," and "St. John's Wort."

All in all, Insight of Evil is really just the same movie we've all been watching for the last twenty or so years. Sure, it's a well-done ripoff, but when you come right down to it, it's still just a ripoff.

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It'll all end in tears...

(From Misfile. Click on image to see full-sized image.)

I've been pleasantly surprised with the past few strips of Misfile. The comic tends to focus primarily on Ash, a guy who a month ago woke up and found out he was now a girl (and everyone he knew remembered him as a girl, saving him from some embarrassment but creating other difficulties as well). That's to be expected. There is a lot of comedic potential in watching a young man struggle with his identity and sense of self while trapped in a woman's body. Whether it's watching Ash struggle with the emotions that get churned up during "that time of the month" or having guys hit on her, it makes for some amusing and intriguing stories.

However, there is a second part of the comic, one that has only been glanced at from time to time without as much interest; that being Emily's story. Emily was also a victim of a Misfile (an error in heaven in which the angel Rumisiel put Ash's file in the "female human" drawer, and failed to replace two pages of Emily's folder when he re-filed her). But "losing two years of her life" seems a fairly bland problem when compared to the struggle to keep one's identity and sense of self.

That's a shame, as Emily is a very interesting young lady. She'd been accepted into Harvard after years of struggling and studying hard, a path that was chosen for her by her mother. Emily's mom wants her to go and pursue a path denied to her because she got pregnant at an early age (though I'm unsure if Emily was born while her mom was in high school or while starting college). So Emily gets to repeat the last two years of high school, when what few friends she had are busy getting ready to go off to college and pursue their dreams.

It's a bit of a wake-up call. And if not for Ash, she'd probably just have given up and started studying again, struggling to redo everything she'd done before. And it's not easier this time just because she'd taken all the tests before and already learned the subject. Emily... got a B-. And her mother freaked when she found the test stuffed in the garbage.

I've commented about Emily's mom before. At an early age she'd convinced her daughter that she was going to Harvard. She was going to do what her mom couldn't do. She was going to succeed where her mother failed. She was going to... be her mother's puppet, dancing to her mother's tune, doing everything her mother wanted to do, and never mind what she herself wanted to do.

The strain is showing. She's rethinking her path. Maybe Harvard isn't for her... maybe she could do other things with her life. There are other colleges. There's Ash, who is the first real friend she's had and who she even may has some feelings for, even though he's a girl currently.

It doesn't help that whatever she does, it's going to be erased (supposedly) if and when Rumisiel gets back into heaven and replaces the files. Ash will be a guy again, and probably not remember any of the last month or so. She will be ready to go off to college, to Harvard. All that studying will be for naught; wasted effort. And she won't remember Ash or anything of what they went through. (Of course, I suspect things won't quite work that way. The past month or so will be remembered, in a way... of course, maybe it'll be that she ends up having met male Ash and starts hanging out with him and becoming his friend... or maybe they'll both remember everything that happened, even if their lives have been rewritten.)

She can't talk to her mom about it. Her mom would think she's crazy. I mean, angels, coming to Earth? Or erasing two years of her life? Nonsense. Idiocy. She's been hanging out with that Ash girl, getting weird thoughts put in her head. Her mom would lock her in her house, forbid her to talk to her new friend, force her to study non-stop instead. And Molly, her one friend before now... well, Emily's realized already that Molly is a self-conscious superficial little twit who is her friend because their families are close, not because she's actually likeable.

The only person she can talk to is Ash, who has her own problems. But... Ash is also more of a friend than Molly; she cares about Emily, appreciates her for what Emily's done to help her out with her own problems. Heck, she even helped Emily with putting in a manual transmission, teaching her how to drive it (well, trying to help; Ash is more of an instinctual driver, while Emily is more analytical and needed to read up on it to really learn), and doing other upgrades to the car. She even helped Emily pick out the car, and probably got her a better deal than what she'd gotten the first time around.

What's more, Emily is realizing that the path to Harvard isn't exactly one she's interested in. She followed her mother's will for so long that she wasn't living for herself. But... why Harvard? Why not someplace else? Why not pursue her own dreams? But if she dared suggest to her mother that she was going to do something other with her life than go to Harvard and do exactly what her mom wants her to do... I'm sure Ash could hear the screaming from her home.

So we have Emily on Ash's doorstep in tears. You know... I think it'll do both of them some good. Ash needs to be reminded that she's not the only one who's suffering because of the Misfile. And Emily could use a friend right now... and something to distract her about how sucky life is at the moment.

Just don't expect them to cuddle or kiss. *raspberries the crowd* I swear, people just want fan service these days... *wink*

Robert A. Howard
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