Evil Has a Face (1996)

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

***SPOILERS***Sean Young as Chicago police sketch artist Gwen McGerrall looks so bored to tears in the made for TV movie "Evil Has a Face" that at times she looks as if she's about to nod off and pass out right there and then.Given an assignment to travel to far off Redmond Minnesota to help the local police track down a child kidnapper Gwen is about as interested in going up there as she would be in going to the Arctic but does it anyway. As we soon learn Gwen has very personal reasons for going to Redmond beside all her expenses being paid by the Redmond Police Department. It's there in the "Land of Ten Thousands Lakes" where Gwen was brought up.Gwen had been abused by her step father Henry Wills McGarrell, Cheicie Ross, who died in a car crash back in 1964 when Gwen was five years old. It was that the unknown serial child killer and kidnapper who's on the loose in that part of the state that reminds Glewn of her long dead "Daddy" whom she hates with a passion.With the help of local Redmond cop Tom Sawyer-yes that's his real name- played William R. Moses and kidnap victim Bria, Brighton Hertfort, Gwen gets wind of who the serial killer and kidnapper really is! Or does she! The evidence that Gwen comes up with later turns out to be bogus in that Bria, the only survivor of the serial killer,described him to be Gwen's own father who been dead for at least 30 years!***SPOILER ALERT*** It soon turns out that Bria accurately described the person who kidnapped her, which Gwen did a police sketch of, but she was off in how old he was supposed to be by almost a generation!The movie started getting itself lost in time and space by the time Gwen finally realized whom the mysterious serial killer was. In that it showed that Gwen wasn't anywhere near the sharp and smart cookie that we were lead to believe, by both the Chicago and Redmond Police Departments, that she was. The killer himself was anything but a master criminal in that he was so out in the open and clumsy in his actions it was almost a miracle that he wasn't spotted and caught before he committed his first of a string of some dozen crimes.Even though she was anything but convincing in her acting I have to say that Sean Young, as cold and icy looking as she was, was a real turn on even, it gets pretty cold up there in Minnesota in the wintertime, with enough clothes on to withstand 30 degree below zero wind gusts.

Always like the great acting of Sean Young,(Gwen), and in this picture she does a fantastic job as an sketch artist along with some Spiritual Powers which help her seek out the EVIL that seems to haunt her and Brighton Hertford,(Bria), a little girl who has been abused and needs help. However, Gwen also has some hidden secrets in her past childhood which also seem to haunt her through out the picture. There is a great scene in the picture where Bria manages to hand Gwen a gun under the table and all Hell breaks loose. Gwen does draw a wrong sketch of a man that Bria does not seem to recognize and it does give the film more suspense. If you want to get away from watching the World News for awhile, this is a great film that will entertain and will keep your interest right to the very END. Enjoy!

Good yarn about a series of child molestations/murders taking place in a small Minnesota town. When the most recent victim goes missing the police call in a sketch artist who has had success in bringing criminals to justice with her detailed drawings. When a witness is found and the sketch is completed the artist is confounded because she thinks she knows the felon. A manhunt is started for the man leading the authorities down a road to a series of misleading conclusions. Exciting, although unrealistic, finale.

This movie is about a female sketch-artist who is called out to a small rural town where a little girl has been kidnapped and may give a description of the perpetrator. The sheriff suspects he may have been involved in more, and the sketch-artist must confront horrors from her own past.This is actually a pretty good, low-budget thriller. Sean Young is great, and William Moses (of Perry Mason fame) is sympathetic.The movie's main achievement is avoiding the traps of improbability (there's only one) and cheap scares, where lesser well-thought out movies go for the Michael Myers/Jason Voorhees thing of the killer being everywhere.Sean Young acts well and believably - what happened to her career, though, which seemed so promising at the time she had a small role in Wall Street and Blade Runner. She needs to pick movies with more potential.