Review of Evidence (2013) by Jeff G — 18 Feb 2014

It fails as a police procedural by not setting up the facts and the stakes from the beginning. It fails as found footage horror by keep switching POVs and chronological order, which take you out of the action, especially when the camera switch to the investigation room. It fails as a slasher film because you never get to see the slow, agonizing death scenes up close. It fails at any suspense by keep throwing one meaningless red herring after another without any concern with the logic of the overall narrative, and the necessary pacing to allow the suspense to brew, and you just stop caring whodunit before half of the film. It takes many familiar elements from other successful films without understanding what makes them work, and ends up being a film full of failed gimmicks. Nothing makes sense, none of the surprises feel punchy or rewarding.

Which is a shame cuz technically the film is actually quite good, with some very slick effect shots. The killer is pretty damn scary, and the death scenes have all the potential to be really gruesome and fun, so it could've been a pretty good slasher film. The setting is also very eery, it would have been a satisfying found footage horror if the film spend more time exploring the environment and heighten the isolation and the dreadfulness, instead of wasting all that time early in the film for character exposition and still fail to get the audience to invest in them. The police procedural scenes are lazily written and never escape the laughable, cringe-inducing territory. They just take audience out of the action and feel completely pointless, when it's pretty clear early on in the film that it doesn't aspire to be a satisfying whodunit anyway. A more straight-forward found footage slasher film is totally within the abilities of this production team and the result would probably be both enjoyable and satisfying.

An opposite of that treatment would be focusing on the police procedural investigating a viral snuff killer, with the facts and the motives clear from the start and let the details of the horror slowly unfold both via found footage and the course of the investigation itself. That would have been an even more interesting film thematically with or without the whodunit, with huge opportunities for both gore and meta-commentary. But that film will definitely require much more capable hands to pull off.