Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

In writer / director Richard Dutcher’s horror / comedy / supernatural / thriller ‘Evil Angel’ we meet the character of hard working EMT Marcus (Kristopher Shephard) and Marcus has just fallen in love. Unfortunately for Marcus the girl he has fallen for has just died after being gutted by a loon who stabbed her in the abdomen repeatedly, despite Marcus’ best efforts to save her, but whaddayagonnado? Thing is Marcus already has a wife in Carla (Eva Gaudet) and this wife of his is about as hot as they come but alas she enjoys having sex with men other than Marcus, and she is also a cutter and is also suicidal which kinds of sullies her hotness factor.

While Marcus is dealing with his myriad of personal and professional issues we also get to spend some quality time with a Private Detective named Carruthers (Ving Rhames). In the films opening scene… actually the films opening scene consisted of credits layered over a woman with 2% body fat strip teasing but that bit of gratuitousness is neither here nor there really… but the films opening scene showed us some poor man fearfully running through the streets of whatever city this was supposed to be as every single woman he sees appears to him as an blood sucking demonic evil succubus, which will lead this man face-planting off of a thirty story building. This man was a good friend of Carruthers partner and son, and as such this pair of detectives is investigating why this man saw fit to jump off a skyscraper.

While Marcus is dealing with his problems and Carruthers is investigating this dudes death we also get to spend some quality time with the luscious red head Caroline (J.J. Neward). Caroline was in a coma in a hospital but then she wakes up, kills a pair amorous hospital employees for what seems to be absolutely no reason, and now she’s on the street and is hungry for revenge against an awful lot of people, including Carruthers son. Why would this woman, who was a school teacher before she went into a coma, wake up and want to kill half of the people in this city? Because she’s not Caroline anymore but is actually Lilith, Adam’s alleged first wife who has been terminally pissed off and harboring a grudge against everything and everybody since the beginning time. That’s a long time for hostility to fester.

So we need these three stories to meet and greet in a somewhat friendly way, and that’s where Marcus comes in with his handy, bring things back to life EMT skills. Since Lilith is all violent and evil and stuff she tends to use up these bodies she inhabits and needs people with access to defibrillators, adrenaline needles, resuscitation skills or whatever can bring somebody who has checked out back to the living so she can enter her body. Did we mention that Marcus’ whore of a wife is suicidal? Well there you go. So Lilith is back in another body and while she’s had a virtual eternity to hate and murder, she also knows how to run that game and she can also please a man properly when called upon to do so. But as good as the poo might be now, Marcus knows that this isn’t his wife anymore and Carruthers has done some research and knows Lilith is running around murdering folks. Both of them know that Lilith has to be stopped somehow but one of them ain’t gonna make it. One them is also a black guy, not that I’m saying anything.

There are some really good things going on in Richard Dutcher’s film. For starters it looks great because the cinematography was on point and does a fine job of translating whatever mood the director was shooting for in whatever scene we happened to be looking at. Despite the fact the majority of the cast hasn’t been in much, outside of Ving Rhames of course, the actors that team Dutcher cast in his movie, including the director himself, did a very good job of deciphering their respective characters and bringing much more to the table than simply looking like underwear models, though almost all of them looked like underwear models. Except Ving Rhames of course. And Richard Dutcher. Plus all the elements were in place for solid entertainment as we had a little skin, a lot of violence, a touch of romance and large helping of action to get us through.

But despite those solid elements there were still some things that kept us from completely jumping on board. For starters this movie was just too damn long and I don’t think there was enough story in the movie to justify the length. A trim here, a cut there, a scene omission or two to compress the film a little bit probably would’ve gone a long way towards making the movie move a little faster and flow a little better. Then there was our villainess. Yes she was plenty mean and hateful and murderous and violent as any good villain should be, but the problem I had with Lilith is there really didn’t seem to be much point to anything she did. She doesn’t want to rule the world or pull off the perfect heist or blow up the U.N. Building or change the course of history or anything. She was just mean to be mean. She killed the kids in the beginning for no other reason than it was something to do, then she started circling back taking people out who had did her wrong which was a little peculiar because she’s is immortal so can anybody really do her any real harm? Then she went after the lady who she thought was having an affair with her ‘husband’ but it wasn’t her husband, he’s just some dude attached to latest body she stole. What does she care unless some of the emotions of the host are left with the parasite which wasn’t clarified if this was the case. And where is God during all of this? If you bash my head in with a fire extinguisher, I get that, free will and all. God personally created this beast so maybe He should do something with her and stop this woman that He personally created from murdering His chosen ones. Hello God, a little help here.  Besides, how bad could Lilith have been?  I mean it wasn't like Eve was any kind of great shakes since she was pretty much solely responsible for the Fall of Man.

I did like ‘Evil Angel’, I’m just of the mind that if Lilith had some kind of achievable goal outside of general mischief and mayhem and if the movie were possibly twenty minutes or so leaner Richard Dutcher’s genre mix would’ve been really, really good instead of pretty okay good.