Malevolence (film series)

Malevolence
Official film series logo
Based on	Characters by by Stevan Mena
Release date	2004–2018
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$3,800,000 (3 films)[a]
Box office	$391,084 (3 films)

The Malevolence film series consists of American slasher-horror crime films, written, directed, and produced by Stevan Mena. The series center around various groups of people who come into contact with a serial killer named Martin Bristol, who was kidnapped as a child and raised in an abusive upbringing by a murderer named Graham Sutter. The series explores the investigations surrounding his crime scenes, and attempts made by law enforcement to put an end to his murderous pattern.

Though the series as a whole lost money at the box offices,^[2][3][4] and were met with a mixed critical reception at the time of their release,^[5][6][7] the films have earned a more positive modern-day analyses while being deemed indie-cult classics of the horror genre.^{[8][9][10][11]} Contemporary reviews have favorably compared the first film to John Carpenter's Halloween, and the prequel to Friday the 13th; while Mena acknoweldged his fandom of the Carpenter's work.^[10][12][13] Ross Hughes of HorrorCultFilms.Co.UK praised the film series, stating: "...his is a franchise that is up there with the likes of Halloween. …a Slasher trilogy made by a slasher fan for the slasher fans…Unmissable."^[14]

Ten years following the abduction of six-year-old Martin Bristol from the swing set at his family's home by a madman,^[b] the search for the child's location have proven unfruitful; ultimately believed to be a lost cause. This changes, when a group of robbers plan a bank heist in September 1999.

The team of thieves includes a desperate couple named Julian and Marilyn, her ex-convict brother Max, and his friend Kurt. The group gets separated during their escape and Kurt takes innocent bystanders, Samantha and her teenage daughter Courtney hostage in order to make it to the team's rendezvous location; a secluded rural farmhouse in the woods. Upon arrival the group begins to argue about the taking of these civilians, only to find that the home they have invaded belongs to a now-teenaged Martin. Forced to watch the murderous rampages of his abductor, and to clean up after him, Bristol has become a serial killer himself. As he begins to murder each of them, the robbers attempt to survive the night. Julian and Marilyn free the hostages, and work with them to try to escape before it's too late.^{[15][16][17][18][19][20]}

In 1989, a young boy named Martin Bristol suffers from congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA), a rare neural disorder in which the patient does not feel pain nor temperature senses. One day while playing on the swing at his family home, a deranged criminal named Graham Sutter kidnaps the child and forces him to watch as he abducts, murders, and mutilates young women. After Sutter slaughters the innocents, he orders Bristol to clean up the mess; a cycle that continues for years.

Five years later, a teenage orphan named Allison Miller comes to live with her uncle Jonathan, aunt Karen, and cousin Wendy in rural Minersville, Pennsylvania. As the family welcomes her to their home, Allison, a distance runner, goes on daily jogs and soon believes she sees a child in the window of the nearby Sutter Meat & Poultry factory, thought to be abandoned. When her uncle asks her to avoid the area due to rumored dangers in the area, she stubbornly rebels and seeks to find out more about its history. While investigating the building, she discovers the nightmares taking place therein and she too is attacked and bound by Sutter. Jonathan and Allison's boyfriend William frantically search for her; she escapes with Martin until they confront Sutter at her family's house.^{[21][12][22][13][23][24]}

After narrowly escaping local law enforcement,^[c] the killer known as Martin Bristol returns to his childhood home, from which he was abducted as a child.^[d] Tortured and raised as the accomplice of his captor, a serial killer named Graham Sutter, Bristol's psyche has been damaged beyond any sense of sanity. Upon returning to his family home, he is angered to find that it has been turned into a rental with various young women now residing as tenants. Ellie and her roommates quickly begin to realize that they are the targets of the murderer who has moved into the area, unaware of his identity and history.

With police officer Special Agent William Perkins on the trail of murders left behind, the Bristol family works together to find Martin and convince him to end his murderous rampage. As they draw closer they work frantically against time knowing that more innocents will die, while Ellie fights to survive the night.^{[25][26][14][11][27]}