EMBODIMENT OF EVIL Review

[Our thanks to Fernando Verissimo for the following review.]

I was lucky enough to catch an avant-premiere of the new Coffin Joe film, Encarnação do Demônio (Embodiment of Evil), that took place in Rio last week. José Mojica Marins, Mr. Coffin Joe himself, was there to present the screening, as were his cast and crew, and producers Paulo Sacramento and Fabiano Gullane.

Although the general feeling was one of celebration, since the audience consisted mostly of guests, the expectations towards the film were incredibly high – and there was plenty of reason for that. First of all, this is Mojica’s first film in more than two decades, his first horror feature in thirty years and the first film in the Coffin Joe series in forty years. Second, the screening took place in the same day the film was announced as an official selection of the next Venice Film Festival – an achievement that helps to raise Mojica’s reputation as a true creative force in cinema, and that is very welcomed by his fans in Brazil, a country that insists in regarding him as a maker of trashy, low-quality films, even after all these years.

Anyway, Embodiment of Evil is arguably the most anticipated horror film event of all time in Brazil. Hence the big, inevitable question: does it survive all the hype surrounding it? And, most importantly, does it stand as a satisfying chapter in Coffin Joe’s saga?

The film begins on a high note, with wonderful animated opening credits followed by a climatic, moody sequence in which Coffin Joe is released from prison after 40 years behind bars. He is conducted by his faithful hunchback servant Bruno to an underground hideout located in a favela in São Paulo, where a group of followers wait for his arrival. With the assistance of his new acolytes, Coffin Joe begins once more his never ending quest to find the superior woman who can give him the perfect child, while hunted by old enemies and haunted by the ghosts of his past victims, all of them looking for revenge.

Tossed in the chaos of the big city, Coffin Joe faces a completely new reality for him: day-to-day violence, police corruption, drug dealing and all sorts of urban malaises. But a metropolis such as São Paulo proves to be the perfect place to find a bunch of great looking women crazy enough to surrender their bodies and souls to Joe’s bizarre efforts. As usual, they must face a series of endurance tests to prove their courage and worthiness – in a most impressive scene, one of them gets to eat a big chunk of her own buttocks while swearing eternal devotion to the sadistic gravedigger.

One tends to expect a good amount of balls out gory scenes from a Coffin Joe film, and boy, does this one deliver the goods. Sitting next to me were a couple of girls who expended most of the time giggling nervously and hiding their faces. Some newspapers reported that in the film’s world premiere (in a local film festival, where it competed with some of the most awaited Brazilian films of the year and took home seven awards, including the one for best film), several people walked away from the screening, in shock.

Embodiment of Evil features some of the most disturbing imagery in the trilogy of Coffin Joe. We’re talking about lots (and I mean lots) of blood and gore, featuring Joe’s seemingly endless repertoire of torture proceedings – including scalping, castration, hanging by big fish hooks, mutilation, beheadings and so on. Spiders and rats make their obligatory appearance, but for the first time, we get cockroaches. Thousands and thousands of them. Remember Creepshow? You think that’s as unnerving as it gets? Well, think again. This one has a barrel filled with the little bastards, and a poor young female drowning in it (played by Mrs. Mojica, Leny Dark).

The top notch make-up effects, courtesy of the young but experienced Brazilian wiz Kapel Furman, are a highlight of the show, showing great comprehension and respect for the imaginative, ingenious and artisan nature of Mojica’s previous work. You can see the same amount of care in all the technical aspects of the production, specially in José Roberto Eliezer’s colorful cinematography, Cassio Amarante’s art direction, and Paulo Sacramento’s editing – which provides the film with an unexpectedly nimble and tight pacing.

Filled with extravagant ideas and characters, the ambitious screenplay written by Mojica and Dennison Ramalho tries to cover a lot of ground in little more than 90 minutes, and although the results may be uneven at times, it sure gives space to wonderfully imaginative set pieces, such as the great climax, where Coffin Joe meets his fate in an amusement park. Ramalho, a big fan of Mojica and an original and talented voice in horror cinema himself, surely understands Coffin Joe’s universe, and one can feel his hand in the project: after all, Embodiment of Evil is not only a new film by Mojica, but a truly cooperative effort in which talents from this generation (and others) get to state their affection and reverence to Mojica’s oeuvre.

Even if some of the characters never have the time or space to complete a satisfying dramatic arch, the great, resourceful cast makes up for most of the script’s shortcomings with very strong performances. Brazilian film legend Jece Valadão leads the bunch as Colonel Claudiomiro Pontes, one of Coffin Joe’s nemesis – unfortunately, Valadão passed away during the filming, and his character ends up having a somehow awkward (but accordingly dreadful) fate. Vets Adriano Stuart (providing great comic relief as Captain Oswaldo Pontes), Helena Ignez, Cristina Aché, Débora Muniz and Luis Melo share the screen with Milhem Cortaz (a very impressive Father Eugenio), the beautiful Cléo de Páris and Nara Sakarê (as two of Coffin Joe’s fiancées), and special appearances by José Celso Martinez Corrêa (a genius of modern Brazilian theatre, who plays the Antichrist), Nilson Primitivo (an underground Rio filmmaker), Mário Lima (production manager of Finis Hominis and Awakening of the Beast) and Raymond Castille – who bears an incredible resemblance to Mojica, playing a young Coffin Joe in the film’s black and white flashbacks.

In the end, what really impresses is the Embodiment of Evil himself – Coffin Joe, of course. Lacking the sheer blast of physical energy of days past, Mojica composes a more nuanced and reflexive version of Coffin Joe – his visage carries that kind of quality that only cinema legends have, bold and menacing as always, but delicate and vulnerable at the same time. Coffin Joe’s foreboding presence in the screen is in itself a perfect testimony to the meaningfulness of horror film monsters everywhere. And as he says at a given time in the film – “images don’t die”. There lies his true legacy.

Review by Fernando Verissimo