Movies
Story Time: If You Want to Break Up With Me I Won’t Kill You With My Mind.
He’s sick, sad, and strange. And he explores that weird place where humor and horror run into each other. Welcome to the darkly funny world of Paul Bibeau.
Inside you’ll find a creeptacular story entitled “If you want to break up with me I won’t kill you with my mind.” You’ll find more from Bibeau over at Goblin Books.
Just tell me how you feel, okay? I want you to be completely honest. Because if you don’t want to go out with me anymore I need to hear that. I’d be upset sure. But I promise we can still be friends. And I definitely won’t use my powers to put a blood clot in your brain and kill you.
Don’t say nothing’s wrong, because I can tell. There’s this, this distance between us lately. You won’t acknowledge it, but I know it’s there. It’s been there since Tuesday, when that old woman tried to steal your parking spot, and I got into her mind and made her slam the car door on her hand.
What is it? Do you need more time to yourself? Are we moving too fast? You can tell me, because there’s no pressure. I love you so much that I truly want what’s best for you. I know you’re a little worried, because of what happened to Troy, but he was nothing like you. He just didn’t care about people and he hurt me. You’d never do something like that. I don’t want to say more, because that task force is still trying to find him. But he’s not dead or anything. He’s alone somewhere, and he’s going to have a lot of time to think about what he did.
You want to see other people, don’t you? Go ahead! You can say it. Nothing bad will happen. Just say it. Don’t you want to see other people? Seriously. Is that what this is all about?
It’s that bitch, Shelley, isn’t it? The one I’m going to give ovarian cancer? Not because of you, though. She just… she just annoys me sometimes, and I think it would be good to force her go through that so she wouldn’t be so fake all the time. And I know that eventually we’ll be together, so even if you need some space right now, I know it won’t be forever. We were meant to be. I can feel it. This is fine. Fine!
I’m sorry. I don’t mean to start crying. It’s just… I get so emotional when I think about how important we are to each other. And it makes me mad. No, not mad. Frustrated. I’m not really mad, honey.
Wow, what happened to that guy? Over there by the Food Court? It looks like a heart attack – the way he’s turning all purpley. I hope he’s okay.
I didn’t cause that, if that’s what you’re thinking. Really, that wasn’t me. I honestly don’t think it was. I mean, sometimes I get upset, and I can feel this rush of energy, and things just happen. But I’m not doing it on purpose. Like with Shelley. I said I wanted to give her cancer, but I was just kidding. I don’t want her to die. It wouldn’t be my fault if she just… y’know… threw herself off the roof of the school.
Anyway, here: I wrote you a 28-page letter and made you a Paula Cole playlist. Let’s talk this out. I know we can make it work.
Editorials
‘Malevolence’: The Overlooked Mid-2000s Love Letter to John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’
Written and Directed by Stevan Mena on a budget of around $200,000, Malevolence was only released in ten theaters after it was purchased by Anchor Bay and released direct-to-DVD like so many other indie horrors. This one has many of the same pratfalls as its bargain bin brethren, which have probably helped to keep it hidden all these years. But it also has some unforgettable moments that will make horror fans (especially fans of the original Halloween) smile and point at the TV like Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Malevolence is the story of a silent and masked killer told through the lens of a group of bank robbers hiding out after a score. The bank robbery is only experienced audibly from the outside of the bank, but whether the film has the budgetary means to handle this portion well or not, the idea of mixing a bank robbery tale into a masked slasher movie is a strong one.
Of course, the bank robbery goes wrong and the crew is split up. Once the table is fully set, we have three bank robbers, an innocent mom and her young daughter as hostages, and a masked man lurking in the shadows who looks like a mix between baghead Jason from Friday the 13th Part 2 and the killer from The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Let the slashing begin.
Many films have tried to recreate the aesthetic notes of John Carpenter’s 1978 classic Halloween, and at its best Malevolence is the equivalent of a shockingly good cover song.
Though the acting and script are at times lacking, the direction, score, and cinematography come together for little moments of old-school slasher goodness that will send tingles up your spine. It’s no Halloween, to be clear, but it does Halloween reasonably proud. The nighttime shots come lit with the same blue lighting and the musical notes of the score pop off at such specific moments, fans might find themselves laughing out loud at the absurdity of how hard the homages hit. When the killer jumps into frame, accompanied by the aforementioned musical notes, he does so sharply and with the same slow intensity as Michael Myers. Other films in the subgenre (and even a few in the Halloween franchise) will tell you this isn’t an easy thing to duplicate.
The production and costume designs of Malevolence hint at love letters to other classic horror films as well. The country location not only provides for an opening Halloween IV fans will appreciate but the abandoned meat plant and the furnishings inside make for some great callbacks to 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. All of this is buoyed and accentuated by cinematography that you rarely see in today’s low-budget films. The film is shot on 35mm film by A&E documentary filmmaker Tsuyoshi Kimono, who gives Malevolence an old-school, grainy, 1970s aesthetic that feels completely natural and not like a cheap gimmick.
Malevolence is a movie that no doubt has some glaring imperfections but it is also a movie that is peppered with moments of potential. There’s a reason they made a follow-up prequel titled Malevolence 2: Bereavement years later (and another after that) that starred both Michael Biehn and Alexandra Daddario! That film tells the origin story of our baghead, Martin Bristol. Something the first film touches on a little bit, at least enough to give you the gist of what happened here. Long story short, a six-year-old boy was kidnapped by a serial killer and for years forced to watch him hunt, torture, and kill his victims. Which brings me to another fascinating aspect of Malevolence. The ending. SPOILER WARNING.
After the mother and child are saved from the killer, our slasher is gone, his bloody mask left on the floor. The camera pans around different areas of the town, showing all the places he may be lurking. If you’re down with the fact that it’s pretty obvious this is all an intentional love letter and not a bad rip-off, it’s pretty fun. Where Malevolence makes its own mark is in the true crime moments to follow. Law enforcement officers pull up to the plant and uncover a multitude of horrors. They find the notebooks of the original killer, which explain that he kidnapped the boy, taught him how to hunt, and was now being hunted by him. This also happened to be his final entry. We discover a hauntingly long line of bodies covered in white sheets: the bodies of the many missing persons the town had for years been searching for. And there are a whole lot of them. This moment really adds a cool layer of serial killer creepiness to the film.
Ultimately, Malevolence is a low-budget movie with some obvious deficiencies on full display. Enough of them that I can imagine many viewers giving up on the film before they get to what makes it so special, which probably explains how it has gone so far under the radar all these years. But the film is a wonderful ode to slashers that have come before it and still finds a way to bring an originality of its own by tying a bank robbery story into a slasher affair. Give Malevolence a chance the next time you’re in the mood for a nice little old school slasher movie.
Malevolence is now streaming on Tubi and Peacock.
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