The opening sequence particularly, narrated by Koehler, while filled with some overly dramatic and trite dialogue, is the best representation of a dream I’ve seen since “The Sopranos”. This is where Andrew Getty’s genius is grandly displayed. Much of the film involves nightmares and unreality. Every awful scene seemed to be matched by one that captivated and genuinely terrified me. Despite all this the film is mesmerizing and there is true genius at work behind it’s glaring flaws. Whether this was due to a production that started and stopped several times over a decade or amateur direction and writing is up in the air. The acting from nearly everyone involved, with the notable exception of Frederick Koehler’s fantastic performance, is pretty bad. The narrative structure of the film is all over the place with muddled character motivations and scenes that go on for far too long with little to no point. Andrew Getty may well have been a creative genius, aspects of this film attest to that, but he was an untrained filmmaker and his inexperience shows. Let me start off by saying that this film is technically flawed from start to finish. When John brings home an antique mirror Dennis begins to have conversations with an entity inside of it that starts to slowly twist him into a ruthless killer. His caretaker brother John (Sean Patrick Flanery) is torn between his responsibilities to Dennis and his relationship with longtime girlfriend Lydia (Dina Meyer) who wants John to commit Dennis so that they can start a new life together. The story revolves around Dennis (Koehler), a mentally handicapped young man who has terrible nightmares that he’s convinced are being whispered to him by someone or something in his sleep. The genesis of this film is the stuff of Hollywood legend and the end product is indeed a fascinating piece of art that deserves to be seen. The main star of the film, Frederick Koehler, even recalls Getty eating cereal at dinner for weeks because he’d sunk every dime he had into the production. He built custom camera rigs, renovated his home where much of the filming took place and even built huge, custom animatronic set pieces. He meticulously worked on every aspect of the film while, at the same time, draining his considerable fortune in the effort to produce his masterwork. My honest advice is to just watch the trailer instead and skip the movie.For fifteen years “The Evil Within” was the all consuming obsession of oil heir Andrew Getty all the way up to his untimely death in 2015. A lazy cash cow aimed at a small niche in the horror fan universe who find the thematics reason enough to get involved with it. Cribbing from any number of movies that are far better, devoid of a sense of build up and sustaining of atmosphere, it is what it is. Yes a couple of scenes hold the tingle on the spine, and true enough to say that Suzan Crowley as Maria Rossi acts superbly, but what about the rest of it? The structure and formula is tired, there's no attempt to spin something new into the demonic possession market, while the ending is undoubtedly as bad a cop-out as you may have heard it is. That's not to sarcastically put down those who enjoy it, for without doubt some do find any form of demonic possession in movies as being terrifying, but in a movie that runs at under 80 minutes, there's under ten minutes of unease, chills or possession based terror. As always with horror as a genre, even the most unimaginative movie will find staunch supporters, such is the case with this here picture from William Brent Bell. The answer to the title question is most likely this near repugnant cash in on a horror sub-genre that is being milked for all its worth.
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