Anders Jacobsson

(On Cable TV, October 2021) Hang around the horror scene too long and you’ll start noticing the dark streak of humour running throughout its fandom. The humourless scary horror fan is rare—most have a healthy dose of ironic self-deprecation in their appreciation of the genre. They know it’s fake, off-putting, and repellent to the mundanes and that’s part of the fannish identity. That probably explains the strong subgenre of gory comedy made by and for horror fans. Evil Ed is definitely one of them—taking on a mild-mannered film editor driven mad by editing gory horror film, it eventually becomes the kind of film that it spoofs in its first half. The fake horror films re-edited at the beginning of Evil Ed are so ridiculously over-the-top that they evoke comedy on top of horror—but they still evoke horror. Unfortunately, I’m not a fan of gore at all, so that aspect of the film eventually falls flat and there isn’t much non-gore comedy to make up for it. Despite some good ideas from writer-director Anders Jacobsson, Evil Ed feels like a horror comedy made for far more extreme horror fans than I am. The ironic aspect of horror films actually turning someone violent is not lost on me, but I wish it was used in the midst of a better movie.