Sick of
'Found Footage'? Well this movie right here, 'Evidence',
aims to step it up a bit with regular standard movie footage
mixed with found footage to create a whole new type of movie
experience. What the filmmakers behind 'Evidence' have
ended up creating is a hard to follow, nonsensical, plot hole
ridden mess of a movie that I kind of liked anyway. Go
figure.
Our film opens amidst a scene of abject destruction and
horror. The cops are on the scene as there is smoke,
fires, dead bodies, body parts and wanton destruction.
What in the world happened here?
Investigating this scene is top Las Vegas cop Burquez (Radha
Mitchell) who has in her possession some video tapes and some
cellphone video, and she is going to stitch this video
evidence together and solve this case. Also floating
around is one Detective Reese (Stephen Moyer), some sort of
'Video Breakdown Cop' who has recently suffered through some
kind of tragedy and wants in on the case. I mean he's
like the best video breakdown cop ever. Burquez thinks
Reese needs to continue with his mandatory leave, but we need
this guy. I mean really, because this cat knows all
kinds of fancy video talk that the clowns that reside in the
video room at the current time, would've never figured
out. I also hope that there are still cops on the scene
of the actual crime doing real police work and not just
putting everything on the shoulders of our video footage cops.
So what does this found footage show us? Well we have
Leann (Torrey DeVitto) who is an actress and her BFF Rachel
(Caitlin Stasey) who is a filmmaker, and Caitlan will be the
one obnoxiously filming everything. The plan for these
kids, as far as I can tell, is to catch a charter bus to Las
Vegas for a glorious weekend, complicated a bit by Leann's
boyfriend Tyler (Nolan Gerald Funk) proposing to her, in a
most public way, and Leann declining this proposal. The
weekend just wouldn't be any fun without Tyler.
Tyler does
show up, we meet our bus driver Ben (Harry Lennix), we pick up
a few other people like Vicki the Russian super model
(Svetlana Metkina), who by chance has a video camera in a box
that she has brought for her son, and now the trip is
underway.
Damn if it looks like Ben the bus driver is taking a Vegas
Shortcut, or something, which leads to the bus capsizing and
then leads to our future victims having to take refuge at a an
abandoned truck stop. What's at this truck stop?
Besides bad cellphone service? Death of course, and the
completely unique concept of a Crazed Welder. Didn't see
that coming. Didn't know an acetylene torch could just
slice folks limbs off. I also noticed, through our
various video feeds, that this torch seemed to be plugged into
something. Now I'm no badass, but I know I can run
outside and unplug something. That I can do.
As our cops sift through the footage, they need to know
'whodunit' and bring them to justice! Well… it was THAT
GUY! Or THIS GUY! Or THE OTHER GUY! That's
pretty much how they go through the process, these cops, and
they never really get it right. Worse cops ever.
What actually did happen is completely ridiculous. But
so is the entire movie, so it kind of worked.
The basic concept behind 'Evidence' is actually pretty cool,
if not pretty ridiculous like most of the movie, that being
cops locked in a room analyzing video evidence, which is a
nice setup for this horror thriller. The ridiculous part
is that this entire investigation seems to start and end in
the video surveillance room, but that's what they are going
with so we will go with it too. As the movie goes on, on
the found footage side, the movie kind of devolves into more
ridiculousness from the Las Vegas shortcut, to the odd
location that our future victims have to be at, to the
illogical character behaviors… but there is a method to
madness on that end, you just have to wait for it.
Now as crazy as the found footage elements are, including the
wacky ending, the cops in the room are probably even more
illogical since these cops seem to suck at their rudimentary
jobs. They randomly accuse whomever seems to be the
culprit at the time without a lot of thought being put into
it, and then scrambled the troops to make some arrest only to
be wrong yet again. All I can tell you is that if there
are survivors, and while I'm no law enforcement official, but
if I find dead bodies and survivors… guess who my first
suspects are?
But guess what… I liked this movie. Heck if I know
why. Maybe because it just stayed in constant
motion. Even in scenes that took place in the video
control room, director Olatunde Osunsanmi kept his camera in
motion, which normally I would find annoying, but here it
added to the action and kept the movie moving forward.
Then you have Australians Stephen Moyer and Radha Mitchell who
play Americans about as well as anybody… sad no more Americans
are trying to be actors anymore… and they played incompetent
cops just beautifully.
Yes, 'Evidence' is flawed, almost beyond repair, but it is
still kind of a fun movie to sit through. I mean it has
an insane welder! How many movies have that?
