Call Me Evil

New Year's Evil Review

In order to get into the full swing of things and prepare for the new year the proper way, I decided to watch the 1980 slasher, New Year’s Evil. This was another first for me and unfortunately, it wasn’t as good as I had expected.

Emmett Alston’s New Year’s Evil is full of 80’s hair metal, mediocre acting, and an unusually low amount of gore… at least what you’d expect from an slasher from that era. I really enjoyed the premise of this film — a mysterious murderer is killing off innocent women at the stroke of midnight in each US timezone. It seems pretty original, but with a forgettable villain and lack of any real excitement, this slasher just doesn’t hold up with the rest from this decade.

The acting wasn’t the worst, but it did seem all over the place. I did, however, think that Kip Niven did a good job of playing the killer. Although his role seemed kind of random, Grant Cramer also did a good job, playing the son of our main protagonist.

If you go through and watch all of the slashers from the 1980’s, you’re going to find a whole lot of blood and gore. Because of that fact, I was expecting to see a fair amount of it used in this film, as well. On the contrary, there really wasn’t much to be seen; only an occasional cut or slash, but nothing too brutal.

The end of the film did help to bring this film’s rating up a bit, but not by much. It did seem to be leading to a possible sequel, but for some reason none ever came. Although it’s no Terror Train, New Year’s Evil is still a fairly decent entry in the holiday slasher category and worth at least one watch. I give it 2.5 timezones out of 5.

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