October Horror 2011: Day 20 - Evil Things

Evil Things is a 2009 indie horror movie by Dominic Perez.

Following the disappearance of 5 pretty white folks a VHS tape is delivered anonymously to the FBI.  The tape is labeled with a handwritten note that just says "Evil Things".  On the tape is a pre-edited copy of THIS MOVIE.  OMGZ!

Most of the film is shot by one of the 5 lead characters, who is a film school student with aspirations of being a documentary film maker.  He's chronicling his friend's 21st birthday party, which takes place at an absolutely sweet house in the middle of the woods owned by the friend's Aunt.  The movie starts off in NYC at the beginning of the drive to the house and follows them as they're harassed by an unknown stalker in a van.  After a snow storm they end up at the house and spend the night drinking and partying, then the next day they spend several hours lost in the woods.  That night, they're picked off one by one, off camera.  The film ends with an over the shoulder shot of the killer editing the video and making a really creepy animal noise, which was heard earlier in the woods.  Then the film re-ends showing the killer video taping the cast hours before their road trip started.  Then shows more of the events of the movie from the killer's perspective during the credits.

The movie as a whole is pretty lackluster.  The scares are competently executed but not well supported by the surrounding scenes.  Also after a slower start the action takes off so quickly it glosses over what happens to a lot of the characters, which makes their ends lose some of their impact.  The complete lack of explanation of anything is also a little annoying.  Even after watching the credits you're left with no real idea of why the killer is doing anything.  For all we know, he really likes video cameras and kills anyone with one so he can liberate it.  The clicking animal noise, while supremely creepy, is given no context...the killer just makes that noise.  It's weird.  I'm not sure if the director was trying to be artsy or avant-garde by starting so many threads and ideas and never really tying any of them up, but it just rubbed me the wrong way.  Sometimes this can be really good, like in Inception where the movie ending is designed to be ambiguous with regards to the single question of "Is Cobb still dreaming?".  However, this works because Nolan expertly crafted the narrative around the question and chose that single question to leave open.  Perez's ending lacks any of this focus.

Unfortunately this is probably a little too confused to be really worth watching, unless you wanted to try to decipher whatever mythos might exist.

Found footage week closes with: Paranormal Activity 3.