Several years after their son’s disappearance, a grieving couple adopts a feral boy, who begins to eerily resembles their child more with each passing day. While the mother believes they have found their son, her husband is certain that he died. As strange accidents begin happening around the boy, the pair soon wonders whether they’ve adopted something not entirely…human.
“Evil Boy” is an incoherent mess. It’s the first horror film I have watched in a long time that makes no sense whatsoever and is so rambling in its narrative, that I wished the movie would have sauntered off my TV screen instead. Olga Gorodetskaya, in her feature-film directorial debut, has a good eye for camera setups but not much else. The performances were embarrassing and, at times, cringe-worthy, while the script was muddled and haphazardly constructed. It is, without a doubt, one of the very worst films I have seen in some time.
Several years after couple Igor (Vladimir Vdovichenkov) and Polina (Elena Lyadova) lose their son Vanya (Sevastian Bugaev) in a tragic accident, Igor will do anything to make Polina happy again, even going so far as taking her to an orphanage so they can adopt a child. Polina has not fully recovered and with many young children, even infants, available for adoption, she discovers a feral young boy living in a dilapidated room on the other side of the orphanage and is convinced he is her dead son Vanya. Igor is not keen on the idea as the young boy is vicious and violent, but over time he warms up to him. Gradually, Polina begins to see the boy is not her dead son but something truly evil as he tries to kill her. When she begs Igor to take him back to the orphanage, he refuses to do so, now believing he is their son but when a nun from the orphanage tells Igor what the boy truly is, evil incarnate, he must make a decision; return the boy or risk losing his wife.
“Evil Boy” is so disjointed that it is almost impossible to keep up with the movie’s plot, or lack thereof. One moment Polina adores her new son while Igor resents him and then, for the sake of storyline convenience, the roles are reversed, with Igor suddenly idolizing him while Polina wants to get rid of him. Even when Vanya attacks a neighborhood boy and strikes him repeatedly to the point that the boy needs 15 stitches, or when he attacks a local woman and her dog, neither Igor nor Polina see anything wrong with this behavior and it is never made mention of again. In the finale, there is an attempt to try and explain the origin of the thing posing as a boy, that originally it lived during the Middle Ages and was horribly burned to death in a freak accident and its grieving mother put a curse on it so that when it was resurrected, whomever he came into contact with, he would be able to analyze them and imitate any loved ones they might have lost in their family and, therefore, trick them into believing it was that that person.
While the concept is somewhat original, it is the movie’s lack of structure where it fails. Any person in their right mind would immediately return the demon child upon seeing some of its actions but here, its heinous behavior is casually swept under the cinematic carpet in order for the terror within to continue. Granted, in horror films, characters do some pretty stupid things, like going into the dark, creepy basement when there’s a perfectly good door right in front of them but without this action, we wouldn’t discover the creature in the cellar. With “Evil Boy,” the creature has already been discovered so when it starts killing and maiming, returning it to the basement is the obvious choice. Sadly, no one seems capable of making any intelligible decisions in this movie, including its director.
Available on DVD and Digital September 8th
