Evidence - Auf der Spur des Killers

Still shot. 3D rotation. Smoke. A crime scene. Then a video camera being placed in a plastic bag marked "evidence". And you know: it's going to be one of those god damned hand-held camera movies. But you are a nice person and you hope, still, that there have to be good shaky cam films. You are, sadly, terribly so, wrong.

I really like Radha Mitchell, I mean, who doesn't, but she is past her prime - time to play in those motherly roles in bad haunted house movies. Stephen Moyer, having won an undeserved fame with True Blood, plays an unnecessarily troubled police/video specialist. None of these two roles is going to give you any satisfaction in what is supposed to be a twist laden thriller.

The story, which I make my best effort not to spoil - I don't know why, is basically a chaotic investigation based on a single videotape. Then there is the twist, one that you have expected the entire movie, because it can't be that easy. And it's not, and it's a stupid twist, and you will swear the day you decided to watch this film, even on fast forward.

So, if there would have been true empathy with the characters - after all they did make the effort of filling the first third of the film with motivational video on how needy were the girls and how much they wanted to enter showbiz, if there would have been any interest in the police procedure - which unfortunately only concerned media statements and video processing, if the entire story didn't reek of "wait for it! the grand finale!", well... it still would have been a crappy film. As such, it is worst than boring and less than funny.

Bottom line: I do this so you shouldn't have to. Respect my sacrifice and avoid this film.

I watched this after thinking the trailer looked good. Huge mistake. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen. The camera work is horrendous! The plot sucks and takes way to long to build the story. It's a shame because the concept has potential but the execution in this case was a huge fail. There are plenty of found footage films that are entertaining. They should have focused much more on the investigators and their analysis of the found footage. Instead they choose to focus on the showing us sub par camera work but do a terrible job of revealing interesting clues to keep the viewer interested. I'm shocked this film was released in its current form. Don't waste your money.

Although, to be fair, it tries its best to do something different. By now everyone who's vaguely into horror films will be aware of the B-movie dumping ground which is the 'found footage' genre. You get the first half of the film where you meet whichever shallow, one-dimensional characters are about to get killed in the second act. Then, towards the end, there's plenty of shaky camera-work and holding the camera right up close into people's faces.

Here, we have all that, only it's made clear at the beginning of the film that everyone has died in some weird massacre at a petrol station in a lonely part of America and we have 'proper' film-making where we see the detectives watching the footage recovered from the crime scene. Therefore you have the obligatory character who just won't put the damn camera down. No matter how many people are chopped up in front of her, she still insists on filming every last second for... well, because the movie wouldn't work unless she did, right? 'Evidence' sells itself as 'not just a found footage film' because there are segments of film where it's not found footage. However, despite the bits with the officers being filmed 'normally' the movie could probably have been made without them.

Yeah, you get a little more to the story than just the regular shaky camera and people running through woods in the dark, bur, ultimately, there's not that much more here than your average (or VERY average) found footage film.

If you're a fan of the genre in general then you might like this. If you're bored of found footage then there's not an awful lot here that will change your mind.

starts out semi interesting and it all goes down hill. every once in a while something happens that gets your interest and keeps you from dozing off. unfortunately you start snoozing again just to snap out of your slumber just long enough to open your eyes for a moment. like other reviews that says this movie is not on par with good movies is correct. total watchable parts of the movie is about 5-6 minutes long, the rest is a wast of time and space. think about what makes a good movie and then wonder why this has none of that stuff in it. they could of made this film a lot more fun if they showed some nudity or had humor, drama, good dialogue? just about anything would of made this movie almost memorably for more then the time spent watching it.

you been warned

EVIDENCE has some nice "whodunit" qualities and keeps you guessing. There's also a hard-to-foresee twist at the end. Still, the surprises are not entirely earned, and the story just doesn't add up. Generally good acting, but nothing spectacular. The "found footage"--yep, it's another one of THOSE--of people screaming, burning, and crawling around on the darkened floor predominates and gets pretty tiresome after a while. The present-day police investigation is much more interesting: More of it and less of what they find on all the charred phones would have made this a much better film.

One good thing: EVIDENCE's makers did their best to rely on real suspense instead of blatant schlock & gore.