Hello Again, Streaker! Boog here, somewhat late in the day, I know, but I was trying to find words to properly describe the film I'm reviewing this week. Bland comes to mind. Boring, uninteresting, slow, too dark to see, and just plain bad come to mind as well. So boring and bland, in fact, that I dare you to find a trailer for it, because I couldn't. For any of it's three known names. It's most popular is
Evil's City, but it was known as Crossing Acheron, or Demon Town, which is not to be confused with an apparently foreign franchise of horror films with the same name, as far as I can tell. Oh, SPOILERS! But, you see, I don't like any of those three names, so I came up with a new one. It's a little wordy, but it spells out everything you can expect: I (6th)Sense What You Did Last Summer Night(Of The Living Dead) in Silent Hill. Yeah, there are no less than four far better horror/thriller films represented here, each for about maybe five minutes apiece, plus padding, to make a barely 82 minute long movie. Oh, and this film gets extra cliche douche points; It starts with a Bible quote. And not just any overused Bible quote, the Mark 5:9 "We are Legion, For We Are Many", overused to be
creepy and disturbing Bible quote. It doesn't get much better than that opener, either, sadly enough.
After the quote, the film opens to an apparent bloodbath being covered live by a news crew. And by covered, I mean the police just let the cameraman follow them inside to get shots of the bodies, albeit covered. I say bodies, because it's supposed to be three people they just found, but the close-up shots on them show it to be three shots of the same body, just at slightly different angles. Also, I'm sorry, but the body they show hasn't bled nearly enough to be considered dead, guys. Check him again, he only has a nosebleed, at best. We get introduced to our main characters, who I will call Douche Male, and Whiny Female. They find two others, and start talking with them about the incident. You see, they are all film students, Douche and Whiny from Cal State(which we find out in the last five minutes), the others being from UCC(which we find out maybe ten minutes before that). Douche and Whiny start snooping around the house, looking for a shot of the bodies, when they get interrupted the other main character, who I will call Douche Female, or DoucheFem, from now on. If you ever watch this film, you might be confused here, as DoucheFem is largely whiny, and Whiny, is a bit of a bitch, in these opening minutes. That all changes pretty quickly though.
After they talk at each other for a little bit, they get ambushed by this crazy dude, who we know is crazy because he repeats himself constantly, and whips himself around like a cokefiend in the middle of a bad trip .He puts a gun to Whiny's head, and keeps muttering something about "Acheron". This absolutely sets DoucheFem off, as she know starts pestering the crazy homeless man about it. She never gets her answer, however, as the world's laziest police sniper waits a whole fifteen seconds after he gets confirmation to take the kill shot he already reported he had. Then we get some weird, hazy thing resembling a car ride, and now we come to the first thing this film does that irritates the living crap out of me. 95% of the shots are shaky cam, or at some weird angle that doesn't let you see what the hell is going on. Well, that doesn't matter, as Whiny the UCC kids, the ones in the car, are drinking and driving and inevitably crash. Whiny then wakes up in a hospital, to have the UCC kids tell her she's been out for a week, then grab her and take her somewhere. When then, oddly enough, get a scene for every buddy cop film ever, as, due to Whiny "still being in the hospital", Douche, who was Whiny's cameraman, is now being assigned as DoucheFem's cameraman. This goes over about as well as you'd expect, but it's supposed to be okay because DoucheFem has done research. To find Acheron. And she has.
Although this place is supposed to be old enough to be only known in "the legends"(That's a quote just about every character uses, btw), DoucheFem has managed to pin down a general area. While the Douches are conversing, we get occasional cuts of the UCC kids telling Whiny about DoucheFem's research, and then mention that they've not only SEEN Acheron, they've BEEN there, and will take Whiny there, if only to beat DoucheFem to the story. So, Whiny and UCCs get there first, if only so we can get some padding scenes involving the Douches insulting rednecks, until we come across a unnamed character from earlier who offers to take them to Acheron, but only after giving all the cliched warnings in the book. ("Do you believe in Evil?") The Douches get to town, now about 20 minutes in, and nothing really happens for about forty minutes. The second annoying thing happens here. To let us know that Acheron is 'supernatural', the director washes out most of the color, making everything seem to blend from shot to shot. While that in and of itself is not a terrible technique, the problem comes in when about 75% of the shots inside Acheron, are shot at night. Washed out color palette, and night shots, equals, you can't see a goddamned thing. Whiny and the UCCs find school records showing a bunch of absenteeism in small period of time, and the Douches discover death certificates, and medical records for the same small period of time. Basically, everybody in town died within a month, leaving it abandoned. DoucheFem gets a few scenes during this time where really dials up the Douche Factor, taunting Douche Male, at one point trying to seduce him, and then runs off. About forty minutes in we get introduced to a small (5) group of soldiers, because Acheron is on government property, and they have been sent to corral these college students, and maybe send them to Gitmo. One can only hope.
These soldiers shuffle around for about twenty minutes while other inconsequential padding can take place. Then, at about the hour mark, Douche Male suddenly runs into a Random Exposition Goblin. The REG explains that Acheron is basically an analogue to the Bible's Sodom and Gomorrah, where everyone just wanted to live in sin. They became so depraved, that they wanted to become immortal to stave off the Final Judgment. Enter some random guy, who gives them a self replicating virus, which the entire town takes, probably in about 3 water tower's worth of Kool-Aid. They all proceed to die, but of course they come back as intelligent zombies capable of speech. Apparently(because we are given no explanation beyond what I'm about to write), this pissed off God so much, he damned the town, making it a living entity of evil, capable to clouding thoughts, misdirection, and drawing 'evil' souls to it like a beacon. Now all Hell breaks loose(HA!), as all of the soldier die within the next eight minutes. Douche and the REG find DoucheFem, and Whiny, and proceed to try and find an escape route. They run into a preacher, who does some redundant exposition of his own, then lets them leave. They all eventually find there way to a wall on the outskirts of the town's cemetery, where the world's worst fire effect is slowly trying to close in on itself, to trap them inside. The Douches get out, the REG and Whiny don't, because, also apparently, the UCCs have been dead since the car crash, the soldiers all died yesterday, the REG has been dead for a long time, and Whiny has been dead since she woke up in the hospital. I would care, but none of these characters ever does anything that makes me want to like them, or care in the slightest. If you ever get a chance to look into Evil's City, do yourself and head for the Raccoon City exit down the road. At least you'll get some excitement.
After they talk at each other for a little bit, they get ambushed by this crazy dude, who we know is crazy because he repeats himself constantly, and whips himself around like a cokefiend in the middle of a bad trip .He puts a gun to Whiny's head, and keeps muttering something about "Acheron". This absolutely sets DoucheFem off, as she know starts pestering the crazy homeless man about it. She never gets her answer, however, as the world's laziest police sniper waits a whole fifteen seconds after he gets confirmation to take the kill shot he already reported he had. Then we get some weird, hazy thing resembling a car ride, and now we come to the first thing this film does that irritates the living crap out of me. 95% of the shots are shaky cam, or at some weird angle that doesn't let you see what the hell is going on. Well, that doesn't matter, as Whiny the UCC kids, the ones in the car, are drinking and driving and inevitably crash. Whiny then wakes up in a hospital, to have the UCC kids tell her she's been out for a week, then grab her and take her somewhere. When then, oddly enough, get a scene for every buddy cop film ever, as, due to Whiny "still being in the hospital", Douche, who was Whiny's cameraman, is now being assigned as DoucheFem's cameraman. This goes over about as well as you'd expect, but it's supposed to be okay because DoucheFem has done research. To find Acheron. And she has.
Although this place is supposed to be old enough to be only known in "the legends"(That's a quote just about every character uses, btw), DoucheFem has managed to pin down a general area. While the Douches are conversing, we get occasional cuts of the UCC kids telling Whiny about DoucheFem's research, and then mention that they've not only SEEN Acheron, they've BEEN there, and will take Whiny there, if only to beat DoucheFem to the story. So, Whiny and UCCs get there first, if only so we can get some padding scenes involving the Douches insulting rednecks, until we come across a unnamed character from earlier who offers to take them to Acheron, but only after giving all the cliched warnings in the book. ("Do you believe in Evil?") The Douches get to town, now about 20 minutes in, and nothing really happens for about forty minutes. The second annoying thing happens here. To let us know that Acheron is 'supernatural', the director washes out most of the color, making everything seem to blend from shot to shot. While that in and of itself is not a terrible technique, the problem comes in when about 75% of the shots inside Acheron, are shot at night. Washed out color palette, and night shots, equals, you can't see a goddamned thing. Whiny and the UCCs find school records showing a bunch of absenteeism in small period of time, and the Douches discover death certificates, and medical records for the same small period of time. Basically, everybody in town died within a month, leaving it abandoned. DoucheFem gets a few scenes during this time where really dials up the Douche Factor, taunting Douche Male, at one point trying to seduce him, and then runs off. About forty minutes in we get introduced to a small (5) group of soldiers, because Acheron is on government property, and they have been sent to corral these college students, and maybe send them to Gitmo. One can only hope. 
These soldiers shuffle around for about twenty minutes while other inconsequential padding can take place. Then, at about the hour mark, Douche Male suddenly runs into a Random Exposition Goblin. The REG explains that Acheron is basically an analogue to the Bible's Sodom and Gomorrah, where everyone just wanted to live in sin. They became so depraved, that they wanted to become immortal to stave off the Final Judgment. Enter some random guy, who gives them a self replicating virus, which the entire town takes, probably in about 3 water tower's worth of Kool-Aid. They all proceed to die, but of course they come back as intelligent zombies capable of speech. Apparently(because we are given no explanation beyond what I'm about to write), this pissed off God so much, he damned the town, making it a living entity of evil, capable to clouding thoughts, misdirection, and drawing 'evil' souls to it like a beacon. Now all Hell breaks loose(HA!), as all of the soldier die within the next eight minutes. Douche and the REG find DoucheFem, and Whiny, and proceed to try and find an escape route. They run into a preacher, who does some redundant exposition of his own, then lets them leave. They all eventually find there way to a wall on the outskirts of the town's cemetery, where the world's worst fire effect is slowly trying to close in on itself, to trap them inside. The Douches get out, the REG and Whiny don't, because, also apparently, the UCCs have been dead since the car crash, the soldiers all died yesterday, the REG has been dead for a long time, and Whiny has been dead since she woke up in the hospital. I would care, but none of these characters ever does anything that makes me want to like them, or care in the slightest. If you ever get a chance to look into Evil's City, do yourself and head for the Raccoon City exit down the road. At least you'll get some excitement.
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