The One-Minute Verdict: Finding the Next Paranormal Activity in Evil Weed

If Paranormal Activity has taught us anything, it's that some crazy kids with fifteen grand, a decent camera, and a nice house to shoot in for a few days can make all their Hollywood dreams come true. But why must only one movie this Halloween season break the bank and propel its cast and filmmakers to instant stardom?

And so, on this Halloween Eve (or Mischief Late-Afternoon, or whatever you like to call it) we bring you the trailer for your next potential grassroots cinematic hit: Evil Weed.

If anything, Evil Weed is a higher-concept offering than Paranormal Activity, which can be summed up thusly: "Two people videotape themselves sleeping in a king-sized bed while a theaterful of people scream, 'Get out of that bed and go somewhere else, please!'" Compared to Activity's minimalist storytelling, Evil Weed's "Kids get high on satanic Purple Thunder at a house in the Hamptons, have sex, then start getting stabbed!" seems positively mindbending in its narrative complexity. (During any Weed viewing, the audience will probably be too engrossed in the film's obvious participatory aspects to shout much of anything; coughing, giggling, and waving of THC-enfeebled arms while its characters are dispatched in grisly ways seems much more likely.) We had a point here. What was it? Eh, it'll come to us.

Anyway, the trailer: Harrowing. An attractive, obviously traumatized female sobs her way through what seems to be either a sit-down with a documentary crew or a police-station debriefing. In flashback, she's wearing a bikini. As are other attractive females, most of whom we'll assume will meet with a gruesome, demonherb-fueled end during what was supposed to be a nice weekend on the Island. A bag of weed -- evil weed -- is smelled. Sex is hinted at. A shovel is swung. More sex is hinted at. There's a scream. (A death-scream, not a sex-scream.) The kicker is cried: The weed, it's...it's...it's tainted!

We may be recounting some of these events out of order, but the important thing, the only thing we really ask for, is this:

Attractive people have sex, then die.

And then, if very recent history repeats itself, a major studio will take a shine to the scrappy little film, Steven Spielberg will devise a terrible, on-the-nose ending that completely unwinds all the creepiness that came before, and soon we'll all be huddled at a midnight screening at the Cinerama Dome, high as balls, cheering on the mayhem.

Verdict: Happy Halloweed, everybody! (Lights pumpkin bong, takes hit, eats entire bag of fun-size Butterfingers, kills everyone at the party.)

Evil Weed [evilweedmovie.com]