Evidence

Granted, I am a fan of Found Footage movies, but I found myself consistently floored by this film...and in a good way.

"The camera never lies," claims Burquez (Radha Mitchell). Burquez and a team of detectives sit down to piece together footage shot from a multitude of camera and camera phones found at an abandoned gas station in the middle of the Mojave desert, the site of a brutal mass murder. The victims are all passengers on a tour bus bound for Vegas.

What happened?

Let's just say it's better you know absolutely nothing going into this film, except for the bare bones setup. Found Footage films can be quite painful if the lead characters are boring or, worse, annoying. In this case, I actually found Rachel and Leann (Caitlin Stasey and Torrey Devitto) to be rather interesting and fun to watch in a valley gal sort of way. They don't seem particularly smart and are altogether rather ordinary, which makes the situation they find themselves in all the more unexpected and alarming.

Olatunde Osunsanmi gives us just enough enough video footage, realistically hacked together, to keep you feeling jarred and disoriented throughout, and John Swetnam's script and story are as outrageous as it is frighteningly plausible. Never did understand why so many didn't "get" this movie and equally puzzled why almost every critic who saw it panned it.

Evidence is a combination of the Blair Witch Project, a really good slasher film, and a disturbingly immediate social commentary. It follows no template and takes a lot of risks. Which many good films have been hated for.

Although, to be fair, it tries its best to do something different. By now everyone who's vaguely into horror films will be aware of the B-movie dumping ground which is the 'found footage' genre. You get the first half of the film where you meet whichever shallow, one-dimensional characters are about to get killed in the second act. Then, towards the end, there's plenty of shaky camera-work and holding the camera right up close into people's faces.

Here, we have all that, only it's made clear at the beginning of the film that everyone has died in some weird massacre at a petrol station in a lonely part of America and we have 'proper' film-making where we see the detectives watching the footage recovered from the crime scene. Therefore you have the obligatory character who just won't put the damn camera down. No matter how many people are chopped up in front of her, she still insists on filming every last second for... well, because the movie wouldn't work unless she did, right? 'Evidence' sells itself as 'not just a found footage film' because there are segments of film where it's not found footage. However, despite the bits with the officers being filmed 'normally' the movie could probably have been made without them.

Yeah, you get a little more to the story than just the regular shaky camera and people running through woods in the dark, bur, ultimately, there's not that much more here than your average (or VERY average) found footage film.

If you're a fan of the genre in general then you might like this. If you're bored of found footage then there's not an awful lot here that will change your mind.

Still shot. 3D rotation. Smoke. A crime scene. Then a video camera being placed in a plastic bag marked "evidence". And you know: it's going to be one of those god damned hand-held camera movies. But you are a nice person and you hope, still, that there have to be good shaky cam films. You are, sadly, terribly so, wrong.

I really like Radha Mitchell, I mean, who doesn't, but she is past her prime - time to play in those motherly roles in bad haunted house movies. Stephen Moyer, having won an undeserved fame with True Blood, plays an unnecessarily troubled police/video specialist. None of these two roles is going to give you any satisfaction in what is supposed to be a twist laden thriller.

The story, which I make my best effort not to spoil - I don't know why, is basically a chaotic investigation based on a single videotape. Then there is the twist, one that you have expected the entire movie, because it can't be that easy. And it's not, and it's a stupid twist, and you will swear the day you decided to watch this film, even on fast forward.

So, if there would have been true empathy with the characters - after all they did make the effort of filling the first third of the film with motivational video on how needy were the girls and how much they wanted to enter showbiz, if there would have been any interest in the police procedure - which unfortunately only concerned media statements and video processing, if the entire story didn't reek of "wait for it! the grand finale!", well... it still would have been a crappy film. As such, it is worst than boring and less than funny.

Bottom line: I do this so you shouldn't have to. Respect my sacrifice and avoid this film.

This film is a mess. By the time all the details have been revealed, I could not have cared less. I generally will watch found footage films, even though I am often disappointed, however I don't remember being less interested in a found footage film than I was in this one. I was interested in seeing this film, I enjoyed "The Fourth Kind" (the director's previous effort) and I like the actors in the film.

I found myself unable to get involved in the plot and it just did not generate any suspense which is vital for a found footage film. Whatever kind of film you are making, you are trying to tell a story and if you lose viewers at the beginning it's awful difficult to get them back interested. Hopefully, the director's next effort will be more successful. All I can say is skip this one!

First three quarters of the film is not suited for this genre. Basically the later twists in the film is what makes this movie amazing.

Things i liked :

• Never saw it coming in the end quiet honestly. - Harry Lennix was the best acting in the film while the rest were average, nothing creative really. - Some great scenery in the beginning. - More of a thriller than horror.

Things i disliked:

• Pointless scenes - Crime investigators were quiet redundant in my opinion. - Audience would wonder what might have happened to the murder as it wasn't clear in the end.

DVD worthy, not Cinema :)