
It’s also a film that plays with your expectations as you wait for each new vision that Sarah has and how each vision will come to fruition… Visions that are remarkably eerie (none moreso than Sarah’s vision of the films two bitchy girls in the attic) despite there often simplicity.
#Evil inside reviews skin
When they turn up uninvited to her home for a party and murderously turn against each other as the night progresses, Sarah must determine whether her visions represent the preventable or the inevitable… or something entirely more sinister.Ī slow-burning horror, The Evil Insideis one of those films that gets under your skin by taking its time to bring you into the story before unleashing it’s true colours. So imagine my surprise when I was asked if I wanted to review a small, low-budget horror by our friends at Signature Entertainment and discovered it’s actually a UK retitling of Teo’s 2011 horror film Dead Inside!Apparently re-named The Evil Inside for international markets, the film follows a mentally disturbed teenager named Sarah who has premonitions of the impending deaths of her fellow schoolmates. Since then I have eagerly awaited news on each and every one of his films… From Witchville to Dead Inside, possible sequels to Gene Generation and Necromentia and his current project, the epic-sounding The Return of Captain Nemo.
#Evil inside reviews movie
Back in the early days of my movie reviewing “career” I was sent a horror film to review called Necromentia and immediately fell in love with the Hellraiser-esque nightmare – so much so that at the time I approached Teo for an interview (which he duly gave) and named it in my Top 10 of the year. It’s been three years since I first discovered the work of Pearry Teo.

The aforementioned lack of atmosphere can be seen in the uninspired design of the hallway, featuring unimpressive textural work and an overall lack of environmental detail.Stars: Hannah Ward, Matthew Mercer, Rayne Bidder, James Adam Lim, Jennifer Zhang, Tara Strand, Sage Howard, Shanda Lee Munson, Jimbo Barnett | Written by Jennifer Zhang | Directed by Pearry Teo Evil Inside is also very disappointing when it comes to its visuals. It just throws loud noises at you, hoping that at least one of them sticks the landing. As a result, there’s no atmosphere in here. The game doesn’t give itself enough time to properly build up enough tension for a scare. This happens ad nauseum every few minutes. They are mostly comprised of loud noises and an object quickly popping up onscreen. The vast majority of its “scary moments” (if you can even call them that) are predictable jumpscares that almost never land. It’s also ridiculously easy, as all of its puzzles are stupidly simple to solve and there are no real threats that can actually kill you. It’s pretty straightforward, being barely more than an hour long. Each and every time you complete a loop, it will transition to a new one, with brand new scares and puzzles to tackle. The game will force you to walk constantly through a single hallway. Evil Inside just focuses way too much on just being P.T., barely doing anything different with the formula and never trying to be its own thing. It wasn’t supposed to fully indicate what Silent Hills was going to be. This is how Visage succeeded: it expanded beyond the reaches of a single hallway, forcing you to explore an entire house, twisting your sense of direction and playing with your expectations in brilliant ways.Įvil Inside on the other hand, sticks very firmly to the original format set up by P.T., but here’s the catch: that game was a demo.

However, you need to add something else to spice things up, to create an identity of your own. I’m fine with games trying to recapture the magic behind P.T.‘s simple yet engaging premise. It’s not a bad setup per se, but Evil Inside fails mostly in its execution. You’ll need to go through multiple time loops and gather pieces of an Ouija board. The basic premise is simple and it’s something we’ve seen countless times: you wake up in a house, horrible things have happened, and you’ve got to pieces everything together in order to solve a mystery. The long answer? This game tries way too hard to be scary and obtuse, and it fails miserably in every single conceivable level. You’ll be staring at it over and over again. Get very familiar with this single hallway.
