Lovecraft, If Lovecraft Had Been Very Tired
On paper, Forever Evil sounds like a solid idea: take Lovecraft’s Colour Out of Space-style cosmic dread, throw in zombies, occult books, and a cult bent on reviving an ancient god, and set it against the backdrop of the Eighties horror boom. In reality, the film plays like someone spilled Mountain Dew on their Dungeons & Dragons character sheet and decided to make a movie about it.
Roger Evans, directing and co-editing in what must have been an act of career suicide note, gives us a film that can’t decide if it wants to be a slasher, a cosmic horror epic, or a police procedural about quasars. The result is all three, badly.
The Opening: Cabin in the Woods, Done by Amateurs
The film starts with three couples meeting at a lakeside cabin, which should immediately signal “Everyone is doomed.”And they are—just not in ways that are scary, or even coherent.
First, Holly gets gutted in the shower, her unborn baby apparently snatched by some glowing-eyed boogeyman. Then another woman is strung up like a piñata, another is dragged off by a tree branch, and the men get mauled by something that looks like a zombie and fights like a drunk mall cop. Only Marc Denning (Red Mitchell) survives, which is a shame, because Mitchell delivers his lines with the charisma of a man reading a bus schedule.
The sequence is meant to shock us into cosmic dread. Instead, it feels like the world’s least fun dinner party, capped off with entrails.
Our Hero: Marc Denning, Quasar Theorist
Marc wakes up in the hospital, bones broken, spirit unbroken, and acting still wooden. Instead of therapy, he decides the best recovery plan is to turn himself into an amateur detective. His big theory? That the ritual killings correspond with pulsings of quasars. Yes, quasars. Apparently the real villain is astrophysics.
It’s the kind of subplot that screams “we need this to sound smart” while making the audience wonder if the screenwriter just skimmed Scientific American once. Marc even keeps in touch with a professor via phone, who helpfully explains that yes, quasars are bright and scary and maybe tied to Yog-Kothag, the Old God of the Week.
Reggie: Because Every Hero Needs a Girlfriend (Apparently)
Enter Reggie (Tracey Huffman), survivor of a previous massacre, who bonds with Marc over coffee and cosmic evil. Their romance is about as organic as a vending machine sandwich. She confesses her love right before Marc is stabbed by a zombie, which is exactly how most great romances begin.
Reggie’s main role is to be kidnapped, scream, and provide Marc with someone to mansplain quasars to. By the time she throws a paperweight at the villain’s head, you’re rooting for the paperweight.
Zombies: Persistent, but Not Interesting
The zombie in Forever Evil is the kind of monster you’d expect to see haunting a discount Halloween store. It gets stabbed, run over, set on fire—yet keeps coming back like a bad sequel. At first, this seems terrifying. After the fifth attempt to kill it fails, it’s just tedious. By the time Marc finally kills it with a mystical dagger, the audience is begging someone to stab the screenplay instead.
Nash: The World’s Worst Cult Leader
The film eventually reveals its “twist”: there is no massive cult worshipping Yog-Kothag. There’s just one guy—Nash, a realtor with glowing eyes, superhuman strength, and a talent for making every scene longer than it needs to be. He’s been alive for over a hundred years, committing murders with his zombie buddy.
That’s right: all the pentagrams, quasars, and cosmic dread boil down to an evil realtor and his pet zombie. Somewhere, Lovecraft is clawing at his coffin lid.
Howard Jacobsen plays Nash with the smugness of a man who thinks he’s the new Darth Vader, but looks like he got lost on his way to a community theater audition for The Phantom of the Opera. When Yog-Kothag finally berates him with the line “Worm! Thou hast failed me!”, it feels less like cosmic horror and more like a performance review.
Cosmic Horror, Made Boring
Cosmic horror is supposed to be about humanity’s insignificance in the face of incomprehensible forces. Forever Eviltranslates that into “Marc draws pentagrams on a map and talks about quasars.” The tension should come from unfathomable dread. Instead, it comes from wondering how long the library scene will last.
Even the Necronomicon shows up, along with other hilariously fake occult books (The Gate and the Key, The Chronicles of Yog-Kothag). They’re meant to lend authenticity. They look like something bought at Spencer’s Gifts.
Special Effects: A Red Glow and a Dream Sequence
The effects budget appears to have been spent entirely on glowing red eyes and fog machines. The monster attacks are murky, the gore unconvincing, and the cosmic climax consists of Nash being sucked into a cosmic void that looks like a screensaver.
There’s also a dream sequence where Holly reappears, tears open her womb, and produces a demon baby with glowing eyes. It should be shocking, but it looks like someone filmed it on leftover film stock from Evil Dead II.
Performances: Community Theater at Its Finest
Red Mitchell, as Marc, carries the whole film, which is unfortunate because he has the emotional range of a potato. Tracey Huffman, as Reggie, does her best but is shackled to a script that treats her as a plot device. Charles L. Trotter as Lieutenant Leo at least brings some energy, though he dies halfway through, which feels like the actor realizing his agent owed him an apology.
The Ending: “Somewhere, a Man Named Nash Is Screaming”
The climax sees Marc, briefly zombified, stabbing Nash with the mystical dagger, sending him screaming into the void while Yog-Kothag calls him a worm. Then the movie ends with text: “Somewhere, a man named Nash is screaming.”
It’s supposed to be ominous. Instead, it feels like a parody of ominous. Imagine watching two hours of budget fog and quasar lectures only to end on a line that could double as a rejected Onion headline.
Why It Fails (Forever)
Forever Evil fails because it misunderstands what makes Lovecraft scary. It replaces dread with bad lighting, paranoia with endless exposition, and awe with a guy in glowing contacts. It tries to be epic, but its reach exceeds its budget by a few galaxies.
Instead of cosmic terror, we get real estate horror. Instead of indescribable evil, we get a zombie who can’t stay dead. Instead of characters, we get people who talk about quasars until you want Yog-Kothag to hurry up and devour the planet just to shut them up.
Final Verdict: Forever Mediocre
If you’re looking for Lovecraft, you won’t find it here. If you’re looking for scares, you won’t find them either. What you will find is a cautionary tale: never give your directorial debut a title like Forever Evil, because critics will gleefully say, “Yes, it felt that long.”
The only truly cosmic horror here is realizing you sat through the whole thing.
