Wonderful character development!

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

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.

This movie has a lot of mixed reviews so I thought I'd review it and have my say.First off this is your average slasher movie which as far as slasher movies go is not that bad a movie, it's very similar to a lot of other movies I have seen and your not going to get anything new here although if you enjoy the 'texas chain saw massacre' type of movie then you will enjoy this one too. The characters in the movie are played OK and I've seen a lot worse in my time, they do justice for this type of B movie and budget. The story is predictable and you'll know whats going to happen a lot of the time but I feel movies like this are more about blood and cuts rather than making you think a lot. Overall it's not bad and will pass a couple of hours on a night, it wont win any awards but as far as this type of slasher movie goes its not bad

Four desperate bank-robbers flee the scene of their crime, agreeing to regroup at a predetermined rendezvous point, a deserted house in the sticks, to divvy up the spoils. The introduction of a pair of unaccounted-for hostages throws a major spanner in the works, but nowhere near as much as the fact that the gang's hideout lies adjacent to the lair of a vicious serial killer.Stevan Mena's micro-budget horror Malevolence is an homage to three of the most influential scary movies of the 70s and 80s—The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, and Friday the 13th—and as such, originality certainly isn't its strong point; but even though the directorial techniques, visual style, score and general atmosphere will be overly familiar to most fans of the genre, Mena's handling of his material is confident, considered and surprisingly effective, offering viewers plenty of well crafted scares, characters you can actually care about, and a very memorable bogeyman: Leatherface, Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees all rolled into one!Those who are only familiar with contemporary major-studio horror might be disappointed by Malevolence's low-budget aesthetic; others will no doubt accuse the film of ripping off the classics rather than paying tribute to them. I, on the other hand, applaud Mena and pals for not giving a toss about such matters and just getting on with the job at hand: delivering a good old-fashioned scary slasher without even a hint of humour or irony to dilute its impact.

A bank robbery goes awry for the four who committed it, three of them meeting at an abandoned farmhouse planning to distribute the loot equally. Julian(R Brandon Johnson)is convinced by his girlfriend, Marylin(Heather Magee)to assist her recently paroled ex-con brother Max(Keith Chambers)and his colleague Kurt(Richard Glover)in a robbery so that he could pay off debts to loan sharks. Max in gut shot, as Julian and Marylin drive in hysterics to a farmhouse in the middle of a rural location. Kurt is in another car, with the loot, when his tire flattens. In desperation he confiscates the van of a woman, Samantha(Samantha Dark), kidnapping her and her daughter, Courtney(Courtney Bertolone). Arriving at the farmhouse first, he momentarily binds the females, but Courtney frees herself. This is when Kurt follows her to an old meat / poultry slaughterhouse, closed down in the 70's. This is where we discover that a killer is in the midst. Once they bury Max, Julian and Marylin are in for a rude awakening, as Kurt is nowhere to be found, only a bound Samantha wanting to find her daughter.Slasher flick with not one original idea. Just a series of story elements derived from a variety of sources, from the killer's look(..sack over head, taken from Kurt, reminding us of Jason Voorhies from Friday the 13th Part 2), to the musical score which has plenty of Carpenter's Halloween in how it sounds. Ed Gein's back story is used for the killer's background as is Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There's really not a lot of plot, with most of the movie over by the half-way point due to such a limited set of characters. I mean, Max is dead within fifteen or so minutes and Kurt doesn't last much longer. That's kind of disappointing since the film's villains decrease a bit too quickly with only the boring psychopath remaining to lurk in the shadows, in the distance, with plenty of creaking doors and characters moving throughout areas looking for what caused a noise. Julian is established as a rather likable young man who got caught up in a situation due to a number of mistakes, including being influenced by Marilyn, so he's not much of a threat. And, Marylin, although she barks orders, isn't that imposing as a villain, either. Then you have this long-winded finale after the big chase scene where the remaining survivors attempt to flee their pursuer, and we get to understand what caused the killer to act the way he does, which hearkens us back to Hitchcock's Psycho. Good rural locations and ominous decaying buildings for the killer to hide are one of the movie's lone assets. The cast is merely adequate. Not much worthy in recommending to slasher fans since there's no real visceral(..the violence is cut away from, the knife never shown being buried into the bodies of his victims) or cheap thrills(..only two women important to the plot and neither is really a floozy or a character normally expected to undress) present.