In the aftermath of a heist, Frankie (Joseph McGucken) and partners in crime Dancer (James Farrelly) and Gaz (Darryl Carter) head to an isolated spot in the Irish countryside to lay low and wait for instructions from their chief, er, The Chief (Owen Roe). Will their plans to make their eventual escape be thwarted by spiky captive Clare (Louise Bourke), friendly, lasagne making neighbour Sadie (Cat L. Walsh) or local ‘tec Murphy (Andrea Kelly)?
With its post-robbery set-up, injured gang member to deal with and extra issues courtesy of a kidnapping victim in the boot of the getaway car, the opening act of Wickedly Evil bears more than a passing resemblance to Reservoir Dogs, albeit with a smaller criminal team, an absence of colour coding and no opening discussion relating to the politics of tipping. There’s distrust between the thieves, an insistence that everyone remain in the central location until the mastermind behind the op shows up and, just in case you hadn’t cottoned on, Tarantino’s debut is even name checked at the point of the hostage reveal alongside a similar, trunk based POV.
Enough with the homage, though. There’s a hint that something isn’t quite right in this rural setting, with mentions of a couple having disappeared a week previously and a surfeit of shadows for who knows what to lurk within. As Frankie attempts to control the increasingly erratic behaviour of an increasingly coked-up Dancer, while providing a convincing cover story to Sadie as to why he’s renting a place in the back of beyond, the whole web of deception is constantly on the verge of breaking.
Unfortunately, the tension and the potentially dark humour of such a nightmare scenario don’t come to fruition as they should. The bickering between Frankie and Dancer is sporadically fun but there’s an overload of it, missing the opportunity to mine the heightened emotions of the situation for big laughs. Similarly, the role of Clare as a smart, manipulative hostage isn’t built upon, her mental game playing with Dancer boiling down to the setting of a fairly obvious psychological trap and him being, as the piece reminds you regularly, an eejit.
Disappointingly, the slide into horror comes far too late in the proceedings. There’s some genre-friendly, if unnecessary, creeping around in the first two acts and a feeling that something awful is going on, but it’s well over eighty minutes into a ninety-six minute movie before the tale even begins to show its hand. Granted, the step from chuckler to chiller is carried off by means of an effectively creepy sequence but there’s a huge imbalance between build up and pay off, leading to a final ten minutes that delivers on efficient, low-budget carnage but also feels blunt and rushed.
Wickedly Evil is an exercise in what could have been. The performances are all solid, with McGucken and Walsh standing out as exasperated thief and resourceful local. Some of the jokes work well, such as one involving the rapid removal of tape from over a prisoner’s mouth, and on occasion the script suggests how snappy it could have been, including a line comparing cocaine consumption to the antics of a certain Argentinian footballer which is hardly the epitome of subtlety, but had me giggling nonetheless.
As it stands, this feels like the opening hour could have lost fifteen minutes and the climax could have gained those. The “wham, bam, we’re done” ending makes drastic reductions to the cast list in a time frame so short it may make your head spin. The reveal is one of Wickedly Evil’s strongest points so allowing its audience extra time to take in its ramifications, coupled with a longer battle involving the protagonists, may have landed more dramatically. Rather than revelling in the unveiling of the saga’s secret and letting that soak in, it’s a trigger for a bloody race to the end credits which feels like the twist is a source of slight embarrassment. It’s not, by the way, and I wanted more of it.
Wickedly Evil deserves credit for its readiness to genre hop, but the caper and comedy elements don’t always sit easily with each other, resulting in a tonally unsure experience that seems unwilling to cut loose until the finale. Director Garry Walsh clearly has talent when it comes to staging suspenseful scenes but he’s not ideally served by a screenplay which throws too much focus on chit chat and, most frustratingly, treads water when it should be amping up the thrills ahead of a big finish. Sadly, it’s not quite wicked enough.
Wickedly Evil (a.k.a Bad Things in ihe Middle of Nowhere) will be released onto VOD on 13th November 2023.