Wow! Such a good movie.

Wonderful character development!

Please don't spend money on this.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

A bank robbery goes wrong & the offenders plus a couple of hostages find themselves at a country hideaway, only to be stalked by a maniac who looks like the killer from "The Town that Dreaded Sundown", or Jason Vorhees from Friday the 13th pre hockey mask. Apart from an horrific opening the first half hour plays like a crime thriller but after that, once the killer starts going about his grisly business the film then turns gradually into an effective slasher. The relatively low body count may not go down with more hardcore slasher fans but this film does pack in a fair amount of suspense. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th & Halloween are obvious influences, but that's no bad thing. No complaints about the acting either. Well worth seeing alongside it's superior prequel "Bereavement" (2010).

Its a low-budget indie horror flick, old formula decently shot. Similar to Dead Birds (2004), which also started with a bank robbery n the robbers taking refuge at an abandon house where they get picked off by evil. Unlike Dead Birds, there's nothing supernatural in the movie. Some may call it similar to Dusk till Dawn but that was comical n big budget with big names. The cinematography by Tsuyoshi Kimoto was very good, the story is truly set in the middle of nowhere, showing the emptiness surrounding the abandoned house. The movie keeps the atmosphere (with effective photography by Tsuyoshi Kimoto) and tension strong and never takes a break with it once it kicks in. Malevolence is a horror film for the horror fans. The film tastefully payed homage to the great slasher movies of the 70s and 80s. The characters are developed enough that they keep our interest, and the director Mena restrains the violence and on screen bloodshed, the musical score by Mena is probably the best I've heard in a low-budget film, plays like a homage to John Carpenter. Editing by Stevan Mena n Eddie Akmal was excellent. Variety said of the film: The mark of a good horror director is seldom in on screen gore, but rather the ability to make every anticipatory moment tingle with dread. On that level, Stevan Mena's first feature Malevolence scores well, building a grim atmosphere sans Scream-style winking to tell its tale of bank robbers who choose the wrong abandoned rural house to hide out in.

I rate movies based on whether or not Im scared/entertained. I do not care what the budget is or if the director is "one of the little guys." You don't score points just for trying. With that said, this movie was complete crap. There was nothing scary about it. The fact that people have used it in the same sentence as TCM or Halloween is absolutely astounding (yes, we all know the director had friends and family post reviews here). The plot was boring and slow and there were zero scares. I go into movies looking to have fun, so I don't care if the acting is bad or the storyline not the best. But this movie was just plain flatout boring.

There are a lot of pro and contras towards this movie. It is a so called low budget or independent movie but it was released on the much acclaimed Anchor Bay. And we all geeks know what that means, quality. How this one have made it onto this label is for me a bit weird. Sure, the movie is over before you knew it but still I thought that there would be more. It all starts, again as some other failures with a scene about a boy and girl being captured by a killer. We see that the boy is watching the girl being stabbed to death. Then we go a few years further when a bank robbery goes wrong. Somehow they have a meeting at an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. Once there things go wrong. The killer himself appearing made me think of The Shape in Halloween. Shot, stabbed, hit by a baseball bat, he still reappear. The only mistake the movie has is that the red stuff doesn't flow frequently. Oh yes, in some scene's we see the result of killing but there isn't any gore available. Being an ode to the slasher era it is a shame too that no nudity is involved. Anyway, it is a good effort made by this director (Stevan Mena) but still he has to learn a few things. Yes, there is worser but there are also better independents. Wait a minute, it is in fact true that the score is sometimes to loud comparing the voices. But you can find this flick very cheap, so it's worth buying.