Messy Everly Expertly Crafted Exploitation Schlock
I’m not sure I can make a case that Everly is a good movie. Director and co-writer Joe Lynch follows up his troubled Knights of Badassdom with a messy, excessively violent, insanely over-the-top high-concept genre flick that doesn’t even try to make a lick of sense. It revels in pain, adores misery and has an absolute blast tearing the majority of those wandering into the frame to literal shreds. It’s a video game-inspired shoot’em up that doesn’t know when to quit and blasts full throttle ahead with all guns blazing for every single second of its running time, building to a conclusion that’s about as whacked and as messed up as anything I’ve seen in ages.
PHOTO: Radius TWC
And I liked it. Maybe not as much as I did the director’s debut, the equally crazed (if even more psychotically gory) direct-to-video Wrong Turn 2, but I still enjoyed it all the same. The film is like some crackpot melding of a one-room Tennessee Williams’ melodrama crossed with some comic book obsessed fanboy’s most gloriously asinine fever dream, featuring a central protagonist that’s more charismatic and charming than she has any right to be.
Everly(Salma Hayek) was forced into prostitution by Taiko (Hiroyuki Watanabe) four years ago, and after a particularly horrific night where she has been abused in the worst possible fashion she strikes back with ferocious fury leaving all in who had just done her wrong bleeding to death at her feet. But things are going to get worse, the mysterious crime lord putting a massive bounty on the woman’s head telling all who live and work for him in the apartment high rise to make an attempt to do her in or else. Knowing her time is short, Everly makes a final play to make sure her mother and daughter – neither of whom know what’s happened to her over these past four years – are safely shuttled out of the city armed with enough financial security to keep them out of Taiko’s reach for good.
Taking place almost entirely within Everly’s huge apartment, Lynch and fellow writer Yale Hannon proceed to stage an increasingly disturbing, wildly improbable series of events all of which culminate with another body (or bodies) added to the quickly building pile littered across the woman’s hardwood floor. Yet the film also showcases a cheekily nasty sense of humor as well as an ability to pull the rug out from underneath the viewer in ways both vicious yet oddly satisfying, the gleeful darkness running through things omnipresent first frame to last.
Hayek, who came aboard after other actresses, most notably Kate Hudson, of all people, decided to bale, throws herself into the melee with raw, uninhibited abandon, giving Everly a rugged authenticity that’s far more potent than the movie deserves. Her fury at the evils done to her are augmented by her undying devotion to both her mother and especially her child, the love she displays towards them makes her refusal to offer mercy to those entering her abode uninvited all the more devastating. Even fellow forced prostitutes, most her friends, aren’t above feeling her fury, the moment they make the decision to follow Taiko’s command and go after the reward putting an end to any sort of nicety or kindness they could have expected from her otherwise.
PHOTO: Radius TWC
Lynch is ruthless. He treats a few of his more likeable characters in much the same sort of fashion as Stanley Kubrick took care of Scatman Crothers and Rob Reiner cherished Richard Farnsworth. The director’s lifelong affinity for author Stephen King is readily apparent in this regard, and while I can’t say I entirely approved this certainly kept me on my toes throughout uncertain as to who would live or die. It’s a rather heartless way to treat the audience, I admit, yet somehow thanks to the deft, complex shadings given to the main character and to those she cares most about it’s not as major an issue as it otherwise could have been.
Not that those interested in something as cracked, convoluted and downright gruesomely violent as Everly are likely to care. While some of the twists thankfully come straight out of left field – most notably the appearance of a diseased marauder known only as “The Sadist” (unsettlingly portrayed by Togo Igawa) – for the most part this one-set bit of eccentric nonsense is a heck of a lot more fun than I expected it to be. This is expertly constructed exploitation cinema at its best; whether or not that should be construed as a recommendation is not for me to say.
Film Rating: 2 ½ (out of 4)
