History of Evil Review: A Promising But Uneven Sociopolitical Thriller

In a bleak vision of 2045 America, writer-director Bo Mirhosseni plunges viewers into a totalitarian state run by far-right extremists. When a resistance fighter named Alegre escapes prison to reunite with her family, they soon find themselves trapped in a creepy abandoned farmhouse with sinister secrets.

We’re introduced to Alegre as she and her husband Ron attempt to sneak their young daughter Daria through a checkpoint littered with heavily armed officers. This opening sequence quickly establishes the oppressive atmosphere of this dystopian setting, where civilians can be stopped and searched at any moment. The tension continues mounting as the family scrambles to a safe house to await extraction by the resistance group Alegre belongs to.

But their hideout, a foreboding clapboard home straight out of a horror movie, harbors dark energies they couldn’t anticipate. As delay after delay in their rescue plan leaves them stranded, Ron starts experiencing ghostly visitations from a past resident with murderous racist views. The line between reality and nightmare blurs as external threats close in and internal demons continue their sinister work.

Mirhosseni aims to fuse sociopolitical commentary with chilling supernatural horror, examining how prejudice and hate can infect people’s minds. With its committed lead cast and ominously shot farmhouse setting, History of Evil shows glimmers of an unsettling allegorical thriller. But uneven pacing and sparse character development hinder the film from fully delivering on its ambitious vision.

A Chilling Vision of America’s Downward Spiral

In the opening scenes, Mirhosseni swiftly pulls us into a nightmarish vision of America’s potential future. Through matter-of-fact title cards and tense checkpoint encounters, he reveals the former Land of Liberty warped into a totalitarian state where religious extremists enforce their rule at gunpoint.

It’s a bold premise that clearly aims for pertinence as well as entertainment value. Images of migrant children imprisoned in inhumane conditions still haunt America’s conscience, so this extrapolation into broader authoritarian control taps into very real modern fears. Flashing forward just two decades intensifies the uneasy relatability. Rather than a safely distant sci-fi future, this 2045 setting implicates our own failure to course-correct glaring societal flaws.

The film establishes its political themes most directly in the character of Alegre, an activist and resistance leader literally hunted by the state for her subversive writings. Her situation, along with civilian-monitoring practices like enforced ankle tags, convey a sense of constant oppression that pervades every aspect of this America-gone-wrong.

Mirhosseni delivers these building blocks of sociopolitical commentary effectively enough to give the film some added resonance. However, the world he constructs often feels more thinly sketched than fully realized. While individual scenes aim for provocative parallels, there is no deeper exploration into how such a drastic governmental shift occurred or how dissent is organized. This limits both the realism and empathetic impact of the fictional landscape.

With its general framework for a fascist ascendancy laid out though, History of Evil at least provides enough stage-setting to position its cast as compelling resistors in an ideological war for the nation’s future. But the film needs to better follow through on this grim potential to wholly earn its social message.

A Family Seeks Refuge, Finds Only Terror

After resistance leader Alegre stages a daring prison break, she reconnects with her husband Ron and young daughter Daria. They’ve stayed under the radar to survive in this totalitarian near-future America. But with Alegre’s illegal writings having inspired rebellion nationwide, she knows they can’t hide much longer from the ruling regime’s malignant reach.

So under cover of night, they make a desperate run for the border to meet resistance allies. To evade roving militia patrols, they head to an isolated safehouse. But upon arriving at the foreboding farmhouse, located deep in the woods, an ominous mood sets in. Their point man, Trudy, seems unnerved to be staying there, even temporarily.

Strange sounds and apparitions intensify through their first night, fraying nerves. Then word comes that their extraction has hit complications, forcing them to remain while the ghosts of racial violence past continue their sinister haunting. As Ron’s personality grows more erratic after run-ins with these menacing spirits, cracks form in the group’s trust.

When Ron experiences a horrific vision of a lynching on the farmhouse grounds, the traumatic imprint of decades-old hate crimes manifests itself terrifyingly into the present. Now Alegre realizes the evil infecting her husband’s mind could make him as dangerous as the fascist forces pursuing them. In this isolated place where blood has soaked the soil, there will be no calvary coming. To save Daria, Alegre must tap wells of courage she didn’t know she possessed before an endless night descends.

With its core family in crisis, History of Evil aims for a slow-burn escalation of domestic tension and supernatural threat. But the dynamics meant to drive the narrative forward prove too unevenly written, diminishing the overall viewing experience.

Under Siege From Within

At the heart of History of Evil lies a family struggling to endure in dark times. As Alegre, Ron presents an activist couple potentially compelling in their high-stakes dynamic. Early scenes briefly establish them as partners united by resistance work before prison seperated them. But the film largely fails to make us invest in either their strained marriage or their ideals once we delve deeper.

As protagonists, both come across more conceptually symbolic than fully-realized. Alegre represents rebellion in an authoritarian state, with Jackie Cruz projecting suitable defiance in the role. But the script denies her meaningful bonds beyond that function. Her connection to young daughter Daria seems particularly underserved, missing chances to show Alegre’s devotion as both mother and warrior.

This thwarts empathy for the pair as their family undergoes duress. When Alegre leaves Daria to investigate paranormal activity, we feel her curiousity as a genre heroine rather than fear for her child’s safety. Their relationship too thinly sketched, the story’s climactic final focus on protecting Daria doesn’t land with the intended gut-punch.

Ron receives deeper exploration thanks to Paul Wesley’s dedicated performance. His ethical decay becomes the film’s central arc as racist indoctrination poisons his mind. Wesley nails the physicality of this transformation from loving father to unknowable menace. Yet, with too little foundation for who Ron was before this infection, the dramatic weight of his fall only registers intellectually. We understand the concept; the man lacks dimensionality to make us feel his loss.

Had the main quartet emerged more identifiable in their bonds and backgrounds, History of Evil could have fostered further involvement in their plight. Instead they remain outlines of people navigating intense catastrophe, sketched too faintly to truly know or care whether they find the light or vanish into the dark.

Creeping Dread But Few Real Scares

With its dystopian opener and isolated farmhouse setting, History of Evil understands the basic aesthetic tools to build suspense. Mirhosseni crafts an ominous mood from the start, steeping his near-future America in dread as militarized zones and civilian crackdowns leave protagonists and viewers alike on edge. The safehouse interiors channel a classic haunted house vibe through angled candles and endless shadows.

Complementing the look, though too sporadically placed, Jackie Cruz emits enough wide-eyed fear as Alegre to sell this place as seriously bad news. When paired with Paul Wesley’s increasingly unhinged performance as the ghosts continue probing Ron’s mind, scenes take on palpable menace. After all, what’s more frightening than a protective father morphing into an unpredictable threat?

Yet History of Evil stops short of delivering enough substantive spooks or skin-crawling imagery beyond the general sense things could go badly. There’s little follow-through on the paranormal activity hinted from the surroundings and supporting characters’ vague warnings. Instead we get repetitive cycles of the family awaiting rescue, wondering if various noises and visions indicate real supernatural danger.

A scene of Ron apparently entranced by the murderous ghost while nearly hurting Alegre and Daria represents the film’s most effective convergence of real-world tension meets genre nightmare. But it proves too little, too late — a glimpse of bolder storytelling never fully realized. Had Mirhosseni more seamlessly merged the political fears, interpersonal instability and uncanny entities through an actual driving plot, History of Evil might truly haunt viewers rather than just mildly unsettle before a shrug-worthy finish.

Exploring The Monsters Without and Within

Behind its thin story mechanics, History of Evil reaches for resonant themes about human nature’s light and dark sides. Director Bo Mirhosseni stated the film was inspired by his activist parents’ struggles during the volatile Iranian Revolution era. This context infuses the work with an ambition to showcase courage against authoritarian hatred.

The heroic defiance embodied by Alegre as resistance leader and political prisoner automatically sets up themes around fighting extremism for a just cause. Her fugitive experiences with husband Ron and young daughter Daria further imply themes of family bonds versus ideological commitment. Had these dynamics received greater depth, scenes of the couple disagreeing over priorities could have held meaningful dramatic weight.

But the film’s core thematic thrust lies in an age-old archetypal exploration: the everyday man confronted by evil forces and his own vulnerabilities to corruption. Our expectations align around protagonist Ron facing external peril. When additional ghostly threats infect his psyche instead, the quest becomes saving Ron’s soul itself. His susceptibility represents the human quandary of trying to overcome primal fears and hatreds implanted through generations of violence.

This metaphorical realm is where History of Evil shows most potential. Images of Ron undergoing a kind of demonic conversion experience channeled America’s festering bigotry are genuinely disturbing stuff. Whether these incidents add up to coherent messaging about internalized prejudice remains questionable though. The story’s loose structure hampers topical impact, leaving Ron’s downfall reading more conceptually obvious than enlightening. Still, glimpses of ambition emerge in the film’s attempts to dramatize how darkness takes hold when we ignore our better angels.

A Promising Premise Stalls Out

After establishing its unsettling near-future setting, History of Evil continually struggles to deliver on intriguing initial story pieces. As delays leave the core group stuck at the farmhouse from hell, the plot essentially spins its wheels while failing to deepen character connections or escalate the paranormal threat. Instead Mirhosseni relies on repetitive moments of the family awaiting rescue as bizarre events may or may not portend actual danger.

This missed narrative momentum culminates in a final act that retreads ground already familiar from the haunted house genre. When the murderous racist ghost fully possesses Ron to attack his family, the scene proves less impactful for long-telegraphed predictability than disturbing imagery. And the darker implications of Ron’s vulnerability to ethnic hatred get overwhelmed by the sequence’s clichéd slasher aesthetics.

While the film suggests Alegre must defeat her Turned husband to save herself and daughter Daria, the climax provides little catharsis after we’ve never witnessed her effectively stand up against previous threats. She appears more overwhelmed than courageous when forced into last-ditch physical combat versus Ron. For protagonists, their arcs never satisfy.

In execution, Mirhosseni displays more directorial competence than finesse. He capably generates initial dread through ominous lighting and sound design. Quick cutting between normalcy and unnerving developments works decently to convey fractures in reality. But heavier-handed haunted house tricks like sudden loud music and ghosts popping up behind characters undermine the atmosphere. And narrative pieces that don’t cohere into rewarding payoffs make all competencies feel somewhat wasted in a film that gestures more than grabs.

With its sociopolitical overtones to paranormal horror, History of Evil hints at provocative genre hybrids that could better resonate in more capable hands. This film ultimately stumbles on hollow spectacle and thinly sketched ingredients that fail to bake into a fulfilling whole. But its boldness to blend real-world fears with psychic darkness deserves credit for reaching past conventional formulas. If not fully satisfying here, the attempt itself may inspire bolder genre exploration from those who can fully manifest its promise.

Worth a Look for Ambitious Concepts and Performances

History of Evil aims to fuse sociopolitical commentary with chilling supernatural horror, examining how prejudice and hate infect people’s minds. While the execution doesn’t fully deliver, glimpses of potential shine among the shortcomings. Director Bo Mirhosseni builds an effectively ominous atmosphere early on, steeping his near-future America in dread. Striking imagery of a family man succumbing to violent racist indoctrination carries metaphorical resonance.

Lead actors Jackie Cruz and Paul Wesley also spur engagement through committed performances, even when thinly sketched roles limit their dramatic impact. Wesley in particular compels during his character’s ethical downfall, tapping into the universal horror of losing one’s humanity.

Yet uneven pacing and pacing hinder the film from fully realizing its ambitious vision. Narrative traction stalls out to wheel-spinning effect as character connections and worldbuilding lack development. Still, History of Evil shows enough flashes of talent and substance to recommend for fans receptive to fresh sociopolitical horror fusion.

Viewers primarily seeking sheer entertainment thrills won’t find enough scares or coherence to satisfy genre tastes. But audiences open more conceptual, atmospheric frights and ready to support innovative genre voices could do worse than lending their eyes to History’s imperfect but intriguing struggle between human decency and cultural demons. Its reach exceeds its grasp. But the attempt to shed light on internal and external horrors makes this a contemporary horror parable worth at least a conversation, if not necessarily a revisit.

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