New Year's Evil.

Review #1176: New Year's Evil.

Cast: 
Roz Kelly (Diane "Blaze" Sullivan), Kip Niven (Richard Sullivan), Chris Wallace (Lieutenant Ed Clayton), Grant Cramer (Derek Sullivan), Louisa Moritz (Sally), Jed Mills (Ernie Moffet), Taaffe O'Connell (Jane), Jon Greene (Sergeant Greene), and Teri Copley (Teenage Girl) Directed by Emmett Alston

Review: 
I suppose what the world needed was a slasher film set on New Year's Eve - after all, there exists slashers for other holidays such as Halloween (1978), or Home Sweet Home (1981), or Black Christmas (1974), so why not make one about the culmination of a new year by culling elements from slashers such as those while not having as much substance or entertainment value? What should I expect from a movie produced by Golan-Globus, although perhaps the ridicule should be directed towards the one who decided to have the villain call himself "Evil" with a ridiculous voice modifier facing off against a punk rock new wave show host who will be hunted down by a killer who hunts off a person hour by hour to reflect the changing of the year by time zone. Undeniably, the easiest problem with this movie is that there isn't really any tension or energy to the whole affair, being a horror film as bland as it gets. Kelly isn't particularly interesting to follow along with, not having much charm to go around. Niven, playing a villain that is obvious midway through (in part because we see his face when he goes around trying to hunt people down) isn't really noteworthy, with the twist in the end not helping to drive the movie to actually have some tension. The other members of the cast (such as the obligatory detective played by Wallace) aren't too useful, and there isn't even anyone trying to play for laughs or over-the-top nature, so the 90 minute run-time feels like a chore at times when there really isn't anyone with a sense of humor or a sense of interest to make this feel anything other than low-budget. The screenplay by Leonard Neubauer and story by Alston and Neubauer only manages to have a body count to drive things forward, along with some choice music picks, but there isn't anything here that you haven't really seen before (Black Christmas comes to mind for me) or really care to see. By the time you get to the climax and the film's final pull on the strings of what it calls suspenseful horror, the yearning for the credits is more preferable. On the whole, it is a pretty routine horror flick that will only serve to make its audience look for something more preferable more out of disappointment than anything.

Overall, I give it 4 out of 10 stars.