Let’s Be Evil Review

Let’s Be Evil is a futuristic sci-fi horror flick that focuses heavily on children’s addiction to technology, twisted on it’s head with a bit of Children of the Corn Style.

It looks great, it contains great acting and small glimpses of the capabilities of AR technology but falls hard in terms of story, dragging out dialogue and not making a great deal of sense as the film draws to a close.

Our story focuses on Jenny (Elizabeth Morris) who since witnessing her father’s death as a child has been looking after her sick mother but is in-need of expensive medication and is falling behind on due rent and bills.

She takes up a job as a childcare worker in a futuristic experiment that involves educating children with augmented reality glasses in a very high security underground facility. 

Jenny is introduced to two other fellow co-workers by the name of Tiggs (Kara Tointon) and Darby (Elliot James Langridge) and interactions throughout the movie jump between POV of each character through their HUD display of their respective glasses.

The facility is run by a computer entity by the name of Arial who teaches the workers the use of the AR tech and the jobs they must undertake to supervise these children but all is not as it seems.

When the children are introduced we see a group of cold, emotionless drones who are studying various pieces of curriculum through the glasses, no words spoken, just robotic in every sense of the word.

One girl Cassandra however can somehow still interact (to some degree) on a human level but as time goes on Jenny starts have re-occuring nightmares of her father’s death as the AR tech seems to be learning her inner secrets, sourcing her inner demons and projecting them to her for a play by play walkthrough of Horror.

As the film goes on Jenny, Tiggs, and Darby find themselves locked in with no escape as these crazy kids have been manipulated by the AR tech to perform evil deeds and not for educational purposes. Cue a bunch of crazy ass kids running around trying to kill you.

Now I’m just going to look at it without thinking, or least try not to. The film doesn’t explain where the other adults are, how this project came about, why Cassandra does certain things throughout the movie (especially the ending), Why Jenny, Tiggs and Darby were chosen, literally nothing is explained.

We are left as an audience to suffer extensive dialogue of conversation that don’t contribute to any progression of the story in any shape or form. We see funky glasses, cool tech appliances but nothing in the way of first, second or third act of any substance.

Whilst the movie looked good and did get me excited about future applications of AR tech, I found the film to be rather dull as a whole and I wasn’t hooked at any point throughout. It made no sense other than to serve as an AR tech demonstration for the future. That’s it..

Nevermind. The creators need to watch the Playtest episode of the Black Mirror series and take a few notes down as that is one hell of an AR Horror spectacle.

Let’s Be Evil is out on DVD from 30th January.