Runtime:
94 minutes
Release
Date: July 19, 2013
Rating:
NR?
Director:
Olatunde Osunsanmi
Detective
Reese (Stephen Moyer, True Blood) and Detective Burquez (Radha
Mitchell, Silent Hill) are two detectives tasked with going over the
brutal footage left behind after a murderous slaying in New Mexico.
Through video footage we meet Rachel, an aspiring filmmaker who can't
seem to put down her camera long enough to see what's happening in
front of her. She films her best friend Leann as Leann's boyfriend
proposing to her and as she turns him down.
Later
footage reveals that while Tyler was heartbroken at her rejection, he
reluctantly agreed to go with the two girls to Las Vegas on a trip
they planned beforehand. They make friends with the others on the
bus, including a teenage runaway, a stripper (excuse me, dancer), and
a woman who seems way too worried about the bag she brought with her.
The
driver takes them off the main roads and onto dirt roads, claiming
that it's the way he always goes. After driving over something left
in the road, the bus flips over and crashes. Everyone manages to
escape relatively unharmed and finds their way back to a seemingly
abandoned little town they passed earlier. As the sun sets, the group
finds themselves stalked and killed by a menacing figure with a blow
torch, leaving the two detectives to discover exactly what happened
that night.
My main
problem with found footage movies is that the found footage element
gets to be too much at times. That it why I'm glad the director set
this movie up the way he did. It jumps back and forth between the
detectives in the present day with the footage filmed by the people
on the bus. I thought it might be a little jarring, but it actually
plays well.
I've
always had a fear of drowning, but after watching this movie, I
turned to my roommate and told him that I had a new worst way to die.
There is a scene where the figure in the mask with the blow torch
attacks a woman and literally cuts her arm off with the torch before
setting her on fire. The way he kind of just stands back and watches
her burn for a few second before walking away was actually chilling.
It seems
like a lot of movies have to showcase stereotypes, but Evidence did a
smart job of not falling back too much on those stereotypes. We
naturally have the slightly dorky teenager who somehow knows magic
tricks and the guy pining over the girl he loves, but the movie jumps
between the characters enough that no one person takes center stage
and no one stereotype takes over the movie.
While
the scenes set in the abandoned town were pretty intense, the same
can't be said of the scenes set in the present day. There are
literally scenes where Moyer will say one line to Mitchell, she'll
nod her head, and then they both go back to watching the footage they
have. It felt like too much exposition or as if the director wasn't
sure we would pick up on something that happened, so he had to take
that moment to let us in on what they found. Thanks, but I watched
that scene and I get it.
Other
than that, I'd recommend Evidence. It's currently playing on Netflix.
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