Company logos shouldn’t be
the determining factor in making or breaking a film, but by now you probably
have come to realize Asylum Entertainment and the Lifetime Movie Network aren’t
generally regarded as benchmarks of quality filmmaking. To make matters worse, you know you’re in
really deep shit when your film is directed by none other than frequent trash
peddler Jared Cohn. The same man behind
the abysmal and offensive Jamie Kennedy vehicle Buddy Hutchins as well as the Christploitation flick God’s Club, Mr. Cohn inexplicably
continues to garner work within the straight to video industry excreting out
inept fecal matter masquerading as something suitable for the shelves of Family
Video.
His latest unwanted turd
comes in the form of Evil Nanny, an
Asylum production made for television about a family who inadvertently hires
the nanny from Hell who won’t leave even after being fired. Starring Lindsay Elston as the titular Evil Nanny who proceeds to make
husband/wife couple Fay (Nicole Sterling) and Tim (Matthew Pohlkamp) prisoners
in their own home, the film loosely draws it’s outrageous premise from the true
story of Diane Stretton dubbed the “nightmare nanny” from California 2014 who
more or less squatted in the family’s home after being terminated of her
employment. Reducing the age of the
perpetrator from a 64 year old woman to a twenty something blonde, the true
story already sounds more fascinating than this cheap dreck which stumbles over
every murderous bad girl cliché in the book.
Wanting to be in league with
the likes of Curtis Hanson’s The Hand
That Rocks the Cradle, Evil Nanny is
a cheap exploitation flick that all but bulldozes over the story which inspired
it’s creation with one absurd incredulity after another. When it isn’t serving up dreadful acting and
a surprise finale that all but soils the bed harder than any film I can
remember doing within the last five years, Evil
Nanny fails to engage by peddling cheap tropes that are beyond prehistoric
and worn out. Not to mention both it and
God’s Club flaunt the director’s
penchant for CGI rendered fire and explosions, making an opening prologue of an
orphanage being burned down all the more unintentionally hilarious as obviously
photoshopped flames are hastily pasted over the footage.
Most of the reviews vying
for more festering dog vomit from Mr. Cohn will argue, well, it’s based on a true
story so that gives it solidarity.
Whatever truth there was in the real event has all but been crushed out
of this movie. True or false, Evil Nanny like Cohn’s aforementioned
features I had the displeasure of sitting through, his films have the uncanny
knack of inciting anger from yours truly while watching. Something about the movies of his I’ve seen
somehow place him in a camp even lower than the likes of Uwe Boll or even Tommy
Wiseau because at least they don’t make bones about what kind of movies they
make. The sad thing is it is safe to say
this will not be the last we’ve seen from this guy.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki