Evil Games (2015)

Too much of everything

Admirable film.

Absolutely Brilliant!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Never becomes engaging. I'm a Adrian Garcia Bogliano defender, I've found most of his films to be enjoyable to out-right guilty pleasures. This one is the first I couldn't find anything redeeming in.A basic premise - sad sack accountant works for bad people, wife and kid hate him so he becomes a crazed psychopath kidnapper, but only to up his position in the world. He isn't THAT bad (for a movie like this) - there's nothing perverse that he does (he only implies) and yes he tazes his victim but its for compliance and not for the joy of doing so. He even buys her a diabetic conscious diet. He's kind of a loser but suffice it to say that the ending is wholly unbelievable and not exactly cathartic. It's not really justified, and that fact in itself doesn't seem to be some kind of comment either.This movie is named after a classical piece. It has a hellacious sounding name and it plays a part in the movie but doesn't add much.

I was looking for something a little different from my standard horror fare this evening, and I certainly found it in Scherzo Diabolico, a twisted little thriller from Mexico that starts off intriguingly, gets progressively darker along the way, and closes in a manner that is satisfyingly raw and shocking.Aram (Francisco Barreiro) is a dedicated defence lawyer whose hard work goes unrewarded by his boss. Nagged by his wife about his lack of success in climbing the corporate ladder, he puts into action a desperate plan. After seeking advice from one of his dodgier clients and taking lessons in tying someone up from the hooker he regularly visits, Aram abducts his boss's teenage daughter Anabela, keeping her held captive in an abandoned factory. Driven crazy by worry, Aram's boss finally loses the plot whilst at work and is shown the door, with Aram taking his place. Having achieved his goal, Aram releases the girl believing that he is in the clear, but even the best laid plans can go awry…Directed at a measured pace by Adrián García Bogliano, Scherzo Diabolico isn't exactly a roller-coaster ride of action and suspense, but it is thoroughly engrossing throughout, Aram's plight clearly leading to disaster for the lawyer; the 'fun' is in waiting to see exactly how his scheme falls apart, and how he tries to deal with the tricky situation when it does. Suffice to say that it all gets very messy (quite literally at times, thanks to some very graphic violence), with Anabela, psychologically scarred by her ordeal, proving to be more of a handful than Aram could have ever imagined.

This is gritty low budget at its best (if you are into that kind of thing of course). It's also as unsettling as it gets. Be it the first part or the latter part where it all comes back (more or less - probably more, but that's in the eye of the beholder). And while you feel the pain and anger from our main protagonist, you also feel that he is terribly wrong in doing what he does.Does that all have to culminate the way it does? Probably not, but how else would the movie be able to shock you back into the middle ages (almost literally with what happens). It's not wrong to feel disgusted by any of this, because enjoying this would be the wrong feeling. Accepting this as artistic form on the other hand is the one thing you may have to worry about ...

Where do I even begin? This movie starts out like it's going to be somewhere between A Simple Plan and the rather obscure Hong Kong horror film Run and Kill--that is, a plan that goes terribly wrong resulting in unexpected bloodshed. Spoilers ahead. A lawyer kidnaps his boss' daughter not for ransom, but in order to put his boss in an incompetent state of anxiety so that his boss will get fired and he will get promoted to his job. The plan works until, well, until the movie decides to get pretty surreal and defy all logic as the boss' daughter becomes a psychotic serial killer. This film certainly builds a hell of a lot of tension and leaves you guessing which direction it's going to take next, but unfortunately the direction it takes will leave you shrugging your shoulders in confusion at the same time that you're at the edge of your seat. The most disturbing thing about this movie is the reactions are so overblown. A guy kidnaps a girl just because his boss won't pay him overtime, and then the girl brutally murders a slue of people just because she got kidnapped. This is a very unsettling film that doesn't seem to have any other purpose than just to freak you out. I wish it had a more cohesive plot; it probably would have been even more disturbing if the things that played out made even a lick of sense. But if you're into this type of nightmarish mind-f**k it won't be a waste of your time.