Blu-ray Review: Ever After (2018)

December 14, 2019

Written by DanXIII

Daniel XIII; the result of an arcane ritual involving a King Diamond album, a box of Count Chocula, and a copy of Swank magazine, is a screenwriter, director, producer, actor, artist, and reviewer of fright flicks…Who hates ya baby?

Zombies; love them or hate them you have to admit their apocalypses are always rather grand. Well, after one such incident, the human race is in a serious slump… like the kind where most of it has been eaten to shit and back.

Into that maelstrom of flesh nibblers and ghoulish fiends stride Vivi (Gro Swantje Kohlhof) and Eva (Maja Lehrer), two lasses from ol’ Weimar towne; a city that survived the mess beyond it’s walls by simply killing every last mother fucker they even remotely felt could become a zombo.

The duo are trying to make their way to Jena, a city that’s trying to find cure this whole gut-munchin’ biz, but that plan turns right shit right quick, and our heroes find themselves going through the Black Forest where they will do their doggone ding-dong damnedest to survive.

Kicking out the mother fuckin’ jams with some positives; I must say Kohlhof and Lehrer are the perfect odd couple; with Vivi being a meds-addled, poetry reciting hot mess, and Eva is a no-nonsense zombie killin’ machine. The duo have great chemistry, and their relationship grows and changes believably due to the chaos they are thrown into.

I also truly loved the fairy tale elements that have been injected into what could have been just another zombie survival yarn. Along the way we get the aforementioned deep, dark, woods as well as supernatural beings, Faustian contracts… hell there’s even a castle thrown in there. It’s a unique aesthetic and offers the tale it’s own kind of off-kilter timelessness.

As for negatives, the presentation of the narrative makes the story pretty janky at times; to wit director Carolina Hellsgård’s love of going a tad apeshit with the jumps in time. this causes some holes in what is a pretty damn fantastic story (courtesy of screenwriter Olivia Vieweg).

Finally, something new comes our way from the pretty tired zombie apocalypse; Hellsgård and Vieweg have created something inventive and artistic in Ever After while still hitting some of the genre’s best known beats. Check this one out boils n’ ghouls!

 

 

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