I may not be a parent, but I’ve had enough parents show me their Google Calendar to know that it’s not always super easy like it seems on TV. I mean, when I was growing up, I watched this documentary about a rat who lived in a sewer and raised four crime fighting turtles. If a rat can do it, how hard can it be? But I’ve since learned that the documentary had been largely debunked and parenting is difficult. And being a step-parent can present its own challenges that are unique to that situation because you’re stepping into the parent role for or in addition to somebody else.
And being a stepdad is a lot harder when your stepson exhibits some troubling behavior, like getting into trouble at school or dragging you to the backyard and burying you alive under the cover of a rain-soaked night. Which is exactly the situation that Gary finds himself in with Little Evil. Gary, played by Adam Scott (Severance, Parks & Rec), is moving in with his new wife, but when we first meet him, he’s under a few feet of dirt and his wife is frantically searching for him while his stepson Lucas gleefully waits for him to run out of air. When he’s finally rescued, his wife Samantha, played by Evangeline Lilly (Lost, Ant-Man), begs him to say something so she knows he’s okay. So what does he say? “I want a divorce.” It’s a particularly bad day, being buried alive, so I can understand the sentiment. I think I’d feel the same.
Sam kept Gary and her son Lucas, played by Owen Atlas, apart because she’s had some tragic relationships in the past and wanted to make sure that Gary was the one. But, like any stepdad, Gary is having a little trouble connecting with his stepson. It’s a hard mountain to climb under normal circumstances, but things are a little tougher when you’re called into your kid’s school because he talked back to a teacher and the principal and the school counselor seem to think it’s your fault that your stepson is acting out. The day started as any other. Gary’s making some breakfast for the family, Sam is getting ready for her day, and Lucas is watching some TV before school. Not light early morning cartoons, mind you, he’s watching Reverend J.D. Gospel, played by Clancy Brown (Starship Troopers, Resident Alien) on the morning news, preaching the end of the world—very specifically, on the 6th day of the 6th month, which also happens to be Lucas’s 6th birthday. Now, having lived through my fair share of raptures, including the most recent one, you tend to shrug these things off. That is until the firm and brimstone guy on the TV buys a disused church from you and then you’re sitting in your kid’s principal’s office because he told his teacher to go to hell. And then she poured lye on her face and jumped through her window. That’s a tough day; that’s not “getting buried alive” tough, but that’s still not great. The teacher had a worse day, for sure. The school counselor suggests therapy for both Lucas and Gary, bringing up Gary’s own unresolved parenting issues with his own father. Now this isn’t the first time this has come up, as Gary’s friend Al (whom I first thought was his coworker, but I’ve come to believe that Al is not a coworker, but rather works in a shared office space, since Gary is a realtor and Al doesn’t seem to be) who refers to themself as a stepdad and suggests the stepdad therapy group they go to. Al, played by Bridget Everett (Somebody Somewhere, Wake Up Dead Man), refers to themself as a stepdad and is married to a woman, so I’m not sure if it’s meant to be a play on perceived same-sex relationship dynamics or if they’re supposed to be trans or nonbinary, but one of the things I really like about this movie is that everyone just goes with it. Suffice it to say, Al is gender-nonconforming and they consider themself to be a stepdad. It’s not an issue, it’s presented as Al’s preferred way to be addressed and nobody has a problem.
At group, Gary learns that many of the other stepdads feel the same way that he does. Their step kids are also evil, little monsters who hate them and he’s reassured that there’s nothing really wrong with Lucas and it’s just normal stepdad/stepson dynamics that are hard to navigate, especially at the beginning. The therapy group has a lot of fun moments to it, with the stepdads getting rather unapologetic as to how they refer to their step kids and it’s stacked with comic actors like Kyle Bornheimer (Worst Week) and Donald Faison (Scrubs). So Gary feels a little bit better about the rocky start he’s got off to with Lucas. That is, until he gets a call from Karl, his wedding videographer, played by Tyler Labine (Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Deadbeat) who is very cagey and wants him to come look at Gary’s wedding video. Apparently, the wedding was a bit of a disaster and despite Gary’s insistence that they just want the video destroyed and to move on, Karl is determined to get him to watch one particular moment. Not the part where the officiant is speaking in tongues and getting Gary to vow to protect the child from hellfire and what not, but the part where a freak natural disaster strikes the wedding and Lucas simply stands in it, unaffected. Karl is convinced that Lucas is indeed the Antichrist and sets Gary down that path as well. I mean, you have to admit that things are a little out of the realm of troubled family dynamics when there’s lye involved. I don’t even know how to get lye, but movies and TV have also taught me that whenever the lye comes out, bad things are about to happen. Gary comes to realize that, despite Sam’s insistence that this is all normal kid stuff, something is very, very wrong.
What plays out next is either very silly fun or a surprisingly touching ode to fatherhood, though I won’t rule out that it’s both. Fatherhood here being defined as anyone who decides to stay and step up to do the work of a father or any father figure. It doesn’t matter that Gary didn’t name him, didn’t raise him, it’s up to him to decide what that means from every moment from the one after he became his stepdad. The choice is simple. Grab a couple of mitts and toss a ball around the backyard, take an interest in the kid, expanding his world and yours by bringing the two together or stab him with a consecrated knife on holy ground before he reaches his 6th birthday on the 6th day of the 6th month. These are the decisions that every parent has to make at some point probably and it’s Gary’s responsibility to step up and do what’s necessary. I’m going to stop even hinting at anything else that happens in the movie because it’s really a very interesting story that plays out in an exciting fashion and it’s very funny as well and I don’t want to rob you from being able to experience that. But I am going to talk about some broader concepts that I noticed in the movie. If you’re a longtime reader you’ve probably picked up that I’m pretty down on the concept of fatherhood and I’m really hard on fathers in movies. I once even started a post ranking the worst fathers on TV, but it was filled with too many swears than I generally like in these posts and I just had to scrap it. But Little Evil somehow gave me hope for the idea. I certainly wasn’t expecting the movie to tug at the heartstrings the way it did nor did I think it would have any affect on my thoughts on fatherhood. So there you have it. Now I’m not saying I all of a sudden want children, but I’ve warmed to the concept in general.
There’s something here that is so wholesome and is about choice and healing and the power of therapy and, yes, the power of friendship, as cheesy as that may be. The movie isn’t a parody of horror movies like Scary Movie, but rather it’s more like The Blackening which respects the source material from which it draws. The horrors parts of this film are done with care and composure and they pack in a lot of references to classic horror and classic horror comedy without making it a distraction. The scares are tense and not cheap and there are proper horror mechanics here. And the comedy is very good as well. It is from 2017, so maybe not every joke has aged that well, but it’s close enough that most of it is fine for modern sensibilities. And it is funny. I found myself laughing out loud many times which doesn’t always happen when you’re watching something by yourself with a notebook in hand. I know we’ve talked about the cozy murder genre, and I don’t know if this has been done before, but Little Evil might be the first cozy horror movie. Yes, it’s a horror comedy, but it’s a very different film from the average horror comedy. The laughs here, while plentiful, are secondary to the movie’s narrative. It has an arc, it’s surprisingly narrative focused, and it’s just so damn charming. Okay, a lot of that hinges on Adam Scott, who I’ve always thought is an underrated actor and is just always a delight on screen. When he’s playing a protagonist, I like him and when he’s playing a villain, I like to hate him. He’s just so good and this movie is a wonderful showcase for him because he’s the main focus of the film and he’s in basically every scene. He is the movie and he carries it with aplomb. Al is a character who starts off a bit grating at first, but as you get to know them better through the film, they really endear themself to you. Really, just about every character is likable if they’re meant to be likable and unlikable if they’re meant to be unlikable.
Little Evil doesn’t really tread much new ground and for horror diehards, if you’re looking for genuine scares, you’re not going to get that true feeling of dread (though I would imagine no horror comedy reaches that), but if you’re looking for an any time, sort of feel good horror comedy, this new subgenre of cozy horror, it’s a great choice. It’s a Netflix Original, so it’s available to stream with them, of course, and it’s rated TV-MA for some reason instead of an MPA rating. There’s some language, not so much as you’d hear in 15 minutes of playing Call of Duty online, but it might offend the youngest of ears. The rest of the adult content is at a minimum; were it not for the F-bombs, I could easily see this being rated PG-13 if you’re looking for a family movie for Halloween and that’s something that matters to you. It’s also a breezy 1 hour and 34 minutes long, right around the 90 minute mark which is great for a comedy of this type. If you missed this one the first time around, don’t feel bad—the marketing cycle was so short, it was easy to miss, but it’s still out there now and I recommend it.
