The Devil’s Equinox

Wrought with tropes as old as the horror genre, this fast-paced narrative forgoes genuine scares for misogynistic naïvité and campy sexual themes. Austin’s marriage with Angie is on the rocks, and when he meets an alluring stranger with an unusual tattoo at his local bar, he confesses to her that he wishes Angie were dead. Soon Angie introduces the stranger to him as their new neighbor Regina, and Austin hopes that sexy Regina will influence his wife to loosen up. Instead, he returns home one evening to find Angie dead as he had wished. Stunned and overwhelmed, he accepts Regina’s offer to care for his infant daughter, Ceili. Austin quickly becomes enamored with Regina and is willingly lured down a dark path paved with black magic and lust that proves to be as dangerous as it is disturbing. Everson has skill with the details of scenery, but it’s hard to suspend disbelief in this over-the-top heap of horror clichés, including the dangerous sexpot (“How easy a man is to deceive when a woman is involved,” Austin muses), a pedophile priest (whose lusts are described in stomach-churning detail), bloody Satanic rituals, and the undead. If this were meant to be a parody, it would be hilarious, but it entirely lacks real supernatural scares. (June)