Evilenko Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.5

Evilenko Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown February 14, 2025

There are at least three scenes within twenty minutes of the opening of Evilenko that will send the majority of you scurrying, and for good reason. It's a nasty bit of business, despite actually showing very little; the school-teacher sociopath at its core a murderous, cannibalistic child predator whose extracurricular activities the film details in too vivid fashion. If there's a redeeming quality here, I can't find it, and if there's entertainment to be had in its horrors, I fail to see it. Malcolm McDowell does a fine job crafting a fully formed, all too believable movie monster, but the film itself is too centered on his exploits, going for gut punch after gut punch with no sense of direction other than his inevitable capture or death. If, that is, either one is assured. Evilenko plays like a demon-less entry in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, justifying its existence with true story clout but without explaining why it chooses to make McDowell a near supernaturally gifted protagonist rather than a villain in the shadows.

Very loosely based on the story of prolific 1980s Russian serial killer Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo, Evilenko follows the exploits of ultra-zealot communist Andrej Romanovich Evilenko (Malcolm McDowell, A Clockwork Orange), who rapes, murders and cannibalizes at least 55 women and children over the course of his killing spree. We first see him express his more carnal impulses with a student while working as a teacher, immediately followed by the murder of a different young girl named Larissa, his first victim. It's also when we realize something is odd about Evilenko's influence over his targets, and soon learn that he uses some form of innate hypnosis to lull people into trances that cause them to follow wherever he leads. (Quite a stretch in a movie of overt stretches.) Four years and dozens of victims later, Evilenko finds his match in magistrate Vadim Timurouvic Lesiev (Marton Csokas, Cuckoo, The Equalizer) and psychiatrist Aron Richter (Ronald Pickup, Darkest Hour, The Crown), who come closer to capturing the madman than anyone before. The question becomes, though, just how many more women and children will Evilenko murder before the authorities can ensnare him? Written and directed by Italian filmmaker David Grieco (La macchinazione), the 2004 film also stars Frances Barber, John Benfield, Alexei Chadyuk, Ostap Stupka, Vernon Dobtcheff, Adrian McCourt and Ruby Kammer.

There's hope midway through Evilenko, as focus switches to his pursuit, but it's short-lived as it isn't long before Grieco returns to the strange paranomalization of the serial killer. Hypnosis is conducted with little more than a creepy stare, making it as silly as it is a baffling screenwriting decision. Perhaps the point is to make myth of truth but the only thing it accomplishes is teasing a far more interesting and frightening take on the material Grieco isn't daring enough to chase down. It's made even more baffling in an interrogation room showdown between Vadim Timurouvic and Evilenko, where the killer's power is on full display... until it isn't at all, calling into question anything and everything that's come before. But then we're dealing with a lion, so Evilenko declares, living in his head, who I think the movie is suggesting is Stalin, who's either some real entity (based on the man's super powers) or a manifestation of a gifted maniac trying to come to terms with the mental weight of... super powers? I'm almost ready to give up. Sigh.

Other issues persist. McDowell and Csokas bring their A-game but others -- the worst being the actress playing Csokas' wife -- are stiff and wooden to the point of unintentional hilarity. Casting scrapes the bottom of the barrel and even experienced actors like Pickup are left delivering broad, melodramatic performances as stilted as the plotting. Pickup's psychiatrist in Evilenko is one of the most maddening characters I've seen in a thriller in a long time, and not just because his motivations are clouded in psychobabble and ludicrous sixth sense conveniences. It's his move to approach Evilenko that's just plain stupid; one of many bizarre contrivances Grieco employs for no discernable reason other than his own imagination. But this is from a "true story" in which the name of a real serial killer is changed from Chikatilo to Evilenko so that... we know he's evil? Slamming each nail on the head becomes commonplace, as does driving home the point that Evilenko is some sort of force of nature caused by, if we're to believe Dr. Richter's assertions, the weakening of communism? I don't know. Frankly it's a plot thread I failed to follow on more than one level.

Ultimately, Evilenko is a movie in search of an audience. Too serious and stuffy for horror hounds; too sick, unpleasant and far-fetched for true crime fans. Not that either matters. Even if Evilenko has an audience, the chance that it's sloppy screenwriting, hitched editing and narrative overreach will prove effective is a long shot.

Evilenko Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Evilenko's restoration and 1080p/AVC-encoded video presentation is the highlight of the disc, offering a technically sound encode that doesn't exhibit many issues. Restored utilizing the original camera negative, colors are lively and lifelike, with well-saturated skintones, strong primaries and deep black levels. Contrast and delineation is excellent too, even if the inherent vibrancy of the image is so bright that it flattens dimensionality in some sequences. Detail is befitting a remaster of its caliber as well, with crisp edge definition, refined textures, and a welcome lack of artificiality. The only real problem I encountered was (thankfully infrequent) artifacting, which every so often interfered with both the film's mild grain field and some of its finer details (one wide shot of a forest seemed to have trouble resolving a canopy of distant leaves). It wasn't too much of a distraction, but still a difference from the 4K presentation that was worth noting.

Evilenko Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Less impressive is Evilenko's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, which struggles to create a convincing, immersive Russian hellscape for its madman to inhabit. Rear speaker activity is decent and directionality is more than adequate, but there's a disconnect between the channels, particularly the front and rear soundscapes, that makes for a disjointed experience. Much of Evilenko is front-heavy... until it isn't. When Andrej boards a train or hunts in the forest, environmental effects are plentiful. In most other scenes, though, we get little more than sparse ambience. LFE output is rather weak in the knees too, making for less impactful dynamics. Dialogue is at least clean and clear at all times, prioritization is spot on, and the film's score is fairly well supported.

Evilenko Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary - David Grieco and Malcolm McDowell offer a thoughtful, well-structured commentary track, and I listened to the entire thing hoping to uncover the finer qualities of the film I was maybe missing. Unfortunately, Grieco seems overly enamored with the material, making his more vague musings as baffling as some of the decisions in the movie itself. I think I just need to admit this flick wasn't for me and move on.

• Cast and Crew Interviews (HD, 81 minutes) - More than a dozen separate interviews are available with key members of the cast and crew, among them Grieco, McDowell, Csokas, Pickup and more.

• Evilenko Dossier: Andrei Chikatilo (HD, 27 minutes) - A look at the inspiration behind McDowell's Evilenko, Andrei Chikatilo, the real-life murderer who stalked Russia from 1979-1990 and claimed nearly sixty victims.

• 2021 Retrospective Interview (HD, 69 minutes) - More with Grieco.

• Photo Gallery - A standard stills gallery.

• Original trailer (HD, 2 minutes)

Evilenko Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm still struggling to determine who exactly Evilenko is for. Perhaps it's a mental block or bias. I am sensitive to scenes involving child exploitation and abuse, so it could be the film lost me early and never recovered. Even so, there are truly baffling decisions here (Evilenko's psychic powers chief among them), as well as too many screenwriting and performance issues. Unearthed Films' Blu-ray release is at least a decent one, with an excellent restoration, solid video, decent lossless audio (whose problems likely trace back to the original sound design more than anything more nefarious), and a lengthy suite of extras.