Think you had it tough in high school? Try going through your senior year not ONLY worried about colleges, but also terrorizing the townsfolk as the embodiment of pure evil...quite the juggling act! Unfortunately, Fear No Evil drops the balls about halfway through its mostly well-crafted running time.

For all you heathens out there, we're given a quick little primer on the situation: Lucifer was cast down from heaven, and threatens mankind with his wickedness. God sends three of his warrior angels down to keep an eye out for him, and stop him before he can dish out some REAL damage. One of the angels, in the guise of a priest, has finally tracked down Lucifer (and his rockabilly sideburns) to a castle, where Lucifer's body is killed, ushering in another to take up the mantle. Enter young Andrew Williams, who lets everyone in on his odd little secret when his baptism goes horribly wrong. Fast forward 18 years, and Andrew has matured into quite the creepy adult, attending a school that makes Ronald Reagan High look positively tame. There's sex in the boiler room, pot smoking in the parking lot, and fatal dodge ball injuries (wrought by Andrew himself). Of course, Andrew can't go unchallenged, can he? The three angels are still hot on his red tail, and they've taken some unexpected forms. All of this leads up to reanimated corpses, a Passion Play gone horribly wrong, and a final battle for it all.

It's really too bad that the movie fell apart before it was over. The first half was fun, well written, and well executed. Frank LaLoggia gave us some genuinely striking images, and worked audio and visuals together beautifully. The punk-tinged soundtrack worked beautifully, and fit all of the scenes perfectly. Stefan Arngrim played Andrew with silent menace, or at least until the end. Around that point, the movie goes from sheer terror to sheer nightie. Andrew turns into the fruitiest Devil the world has ever seen, mincing about the strikingly beautiful castle like a vampiric Liberace, sucking any fear one had of his character right out. The editing became extremely choppy, with random shock scenes thrown at us willy-nilly. One scene in particular featured an all-too-realistic dead dog being bled into a cup, which I found amazingly difficult to watch. Did it add anything to the movie? Not really. Did the weird shower-room gay kiss gone wrong add anything? Not really. That's the whole problem. Certain moments were thrown in to shock and frighten, and they were so NOT fitting of the movie that they actually DETRACTED from the mood. It's a disappointment.

Not a disappointment, however, is the presentation of this puppy. Picture quality is stunning, with deep blacks and sharp edges. Scratches and grain were kept to a minimum, with the exception of a couple big white dots that showed up now and again. Color looked a bit muted at times, but the overall effect was very pleasing. We're given two audio options, Dolby Surround 2.0 and Dolby Digital 5.1. Both sounded nice and clear, but the 5.1 had more "oomph," despite the low usage of the rear channels. Extras include commentary, a trailer, TV spots, a still gallery, and extra behind-the-scenes footage. Also a plus is the screenplay for you DVD-ROM owners to peruse. I love this feature, and I'm glad more companies are including them on their releases. Keep 'em coming!

Don't get me wrong, Fear No Evil is NOT a terrible movie. It's just pretty sore that the poor aspects of the film seemed to coalesce into something that almost overwhelmed the true film: The tightly-written, beautifully imagined story of Andrew Williams, Antichrist.