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In the world of document writing, the mantra is KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Or more thematically relevant to Evilution, the goal in science is to always find the most elegant solution. In other words, the simplest theory; the one with the least math. Somewhere along the line a production company with a modest budget thought they could properly portray Brian Patrick O'Toole's everything-including-the-kitchen-sink script, which has never even rubbed shoulders with elegance. Not only could they not, but they shouldn't even have tried. Someone should have reined this puppy in, and hard. Its plot is convoluted to the extreme, and the characters' motivations vacillate in the breeze.
Evilution opens with a straight-up 28 Days Later rip-off. This is not an homage or a reference, but a total stepping on of Danny Boyle's dick. In a secret lab in Iraq, hell has broken loose. Infected GI's run around with bloody mouths, snarling and attacking everyone in sight, spewing plasma from their gobs. The only minor difference from Days is the occasional flip or running up the wall that one of the infected will do. This minor variation in theme reminds me of Vanilla Ice's explanation for how Ice Ice Baby was really entirely different from Bowie/Queen's Under Pressure. It didn't work when he said it and it don't work here. Anyway, a soldier tries to escape the carnage with a suspicious looking bottle of red liquid, and even though the attentive gate guards stop him, it's all moot because a bomb drops and blows the whole place up.
Flash-forward a year, and witness a nice young man moving into an apartment complex called The Necropolitan. This is our first introduction to this building, which figures in a loose trilogy also including Basement Jack and the forthcoming The Necropolitan. It is presided over by a mysterious and unnamed manager, played by Nathan Bexton. Instead of letting the events of the film play out against the backdrop of the creepy manor, we instead have it shoved down our fucking throats. Bexton is cool, and about the only good thing I have to say about the film, but even his deadpan delivery cannot save us from this ridiculous subplot. First he tells his new tenant that the building just appeared one day, during World War II. Then, as they near the basement apartment that is their destination, he tells the man that the chlorine he smells is because the building was built directly over a swimming pool. Wha-wha-what? Then he drops him off with some ominous jazz about always locking his door, and how the building is locked at 6 PM every night so nothing gets out...or in. *yawn* | By this point I am sure you've figuring out that the new tenant is Darren Hall, the soldier who escaped from the secret lab in Iraq. It takes a while to get to the fucking point, but we discover that he is under an assumed name, and is carrying on the research from the lab. Which makes sense, since the serum he has in his magic ampule killed whole lots of people. Anyway, the reason it takes so long to find out what he's up to is because he first has to have ridiculous and contrived interactions with the other Froot Loops in the building. There's Noel G. as Random, a hardcore thug posturing hard as hell, and usually accompanied by his lesser satellite thugs, Killah B. and Asia Mark. They hassle Darren a bunch and steal some of his stuff, and generally go around as an unintentional spoof on gangstas. |  Here's the, um, "star" of the movie. |
Then there's Maddie, a super-hot Latino girl who decided on first sight that she must get a piece of the new white boy. She invites him to her place for dinner on his second night in the building, and lays it all on the line. We're talking candles, wine, low-cut dress, the whole shebangedy-doodle. They make small talk, and then she pulls out the big guns: "You have such sad eyes." I almost turned the movie off right there. Darren of course politely excuses himself, apparently needing to bring the plot to a grinding halt somewhere else for a little while. Like shooting some mice who never did anything to him with his icky red goo. That sounded bad.
Okay, just in case you thought there weren't enough plot points already, make room for the Army sergeant who is sent out on a secret mission to kill Darren, and anyone who might be infected, and retrieve the illicit serum. What is the serum, after all, you ask? Good question. Apparently it is not just a drug the Army was developing to make super-soldiers. Nope, that would be way too simple. Apparently it is an alien intelligence, which got pissed off at all mankind when the Army attempted to weaponize it. If you don't understand what the fuck that means, don't feel bad. Neither do I, and I'm willing to bet few people involved with the film do, either. 
Here's some blood. That'll make the horror fans love us, right? | Now we've got Darren being hunted by the army while living in a haunted hotel while working on an alien intelligence serum while clashing with neighborhood gangstas while porking the local hose-beast. Check. What now? Right, the virus gets loose. Random gets shot, and Darren brings him back to life in a suspiciously Re-Animator-esque scene. Is that what does it? No. Once again, too simple. A junkie breaks into the apartment where Random is drooling like a moron and steals the red liquid to shoot up with. There, that is satisfyingly complex and pointless. Now the rats are eating each other, Random is trying to bite all his friends, the junkie is spreading the angry virus all over the building, and Maddie is being turned into the Queen Mother. What next? |
| Right, the sergeant and Darren, now buddies apparently, go on a quest with Killah and Asia to kill the infected, which can apparently be done with a mixture of chlorine and ammonia. For a quick lesson on why mixing those two things is the goddamned stupidest thing you could do unless you're wearing a full-face respirator with acid gas cartridges, do a search on Google. But I digress. So the pool thing earlier was a set up for this. Because they have 55-gallon steel drums of chlorine in the basement. You can tell because CHLORINE is stencilled on the sides of them. I work in the chemical industry, but I won't bother going into how stupid all of this is. I'll just bring your attention to the green Sprite-looking plastic bottles with AMMONIA written on masking tape on the asides of them. Yeah. | 
Sometimes Nathan pee red! |
So now we get the whole Dawn of the Dead thing, with people being chased through an apartment complex by zombies, all the while throwing condoms (yeah, condoms) full of a quite deadly to ANYBODY mixture of chlorine and ammonia in them. The final battle between Darren and the alien intelligence is suitably stupid to this stupid movie, with the added bonus of being anticlimactic as well. Basically this thing is a winner on all counts. Pick up a copy for pointers on how not to make a movie. Chris Conlee, I'm looking at you. email:
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