Review of Evidence

Evidence (2013)
7/10
Massively reviled but also massively entertaining
16 December 2013
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.
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