If you haven't seen the movie yet, then skip this review because it might contain a spoiler how it's about a wild baboon harassing teens – an amazing, groundbreaking surprise that I bet none of you anticipated; monkeys so rarely get a chance to shine in camcorder flicks, and when they do it's only chimps and gorillas that hog all the glory, so I was pleasantly moved that an ape other than a chimp or gorilla finally got a break.
Though far from me to suggest that it's only about the wild baboon (that btw might also be Sasqwatch, in which case ignore my little diatribe about baboons rarely getting shots at cinema glory). Eventually "Evidence" becomes a zombie movie as well, temporarily nudging the baboon into sub-plot territory. The baboon, not too keen on playing second fiddle and anyway already quite used to being the star of the movie, reappears just to show those silly zombies who's the boss here. From that point on it's basically zombies and the baboon fighting over the right to scare (or kill) the two girls. The girls don't care; they're just happy to scream and run, as that saves them the bother of having to learn actual lines of dialogue.
What I'm saying is: the first part of the movie is "Blair Witch" (i.e. nothing happens, apart from vague threats from somewhere out there), then a wild baboon makes its appearance (making chimps and gorillas all over the world very envious), eventually shredding the male half of the cast into bits, and then the movie finally shows its true colours: just another computer game about a secret military hangar where morally dubious scientific experiments had backfired, turning people into blood-thirsty zombies, while a Nintendo soldier tries to shoot as many monsters as he can. I think every 9 year-old already knows this premise by heart, down to its finest, most moronic/cliché details.
This movie's absolute highlight occurs only 3 minutes into the movie, when the sexy blond (Abigail Richie) flashes her boobs. That was a stop-and-rewind-and-drool-worthy moment, unlike the following 15 minutes which is barely-control-the-urge-to-fast-forward.
I'd rather someone had pointed the camera at her getting naked. That way we'd have a top-notch porn movie instead of this low-notch zombie/baboon film. A naked Abigail getting down and dirty in bed certainly beats watching her pretty head being blown off, mere minutes before the end of this computer game. Why didn't the average-looking brunette get her golova blown to bits?
The girls escape time and time again – on foot – while both their boyfriends got pummeled with ease. Perhaps the baboon is less prone to attacking owners of breasts? Over and over the girls keep entering secret installations, houses, and other property – and yet it takes them ages to finally bump into anyone. After figuring out that the baboon resides outside, i.e. loves the outdoors, why would the girls keep opening doors to get out after they'd finally found a place to hide in? But I keep forgetting that this is merely a computer game.
The premise is what "we're making a documentary on Brett"? Ridiculous; a poor excuse to send zombie fodder into the woods. They couldn't even bother to come up with a half-way valid excuse for the teens to meet the baboon and the zombies.
If I could get a penny for every time someone says "stop filming!" or "keep filming!", I'd have have enough money to shoot "Avatar 2" (with the blue putzes as the bad guys). It's one of the most annoying clichés of the silly camcorder genre. The writers of these films are always in a dilemma how to solve the very obvious illogicality of the camera rolling at all times, so they desperately seek out new ways to justify it being turned on. In this movie, the camcorder's main raison-d'etre (or raison-de-REC) happens to be that "the camera is the best light we've got right now", at least for a while. Not a bad try, but how about when there IS enough light? Well, then "keep shooting coz we need evidence!" Evidence of the director's incompetence? They sure got plenty of that on tape.
"I don't know why I'm not turning this stupid thing (camera) off," moans the sexy blond. I'll tell you why, honey: because this lame hand-held-camera horror flick wouldn't exist without it, and without the REC button being "on" at all times you'd still be waitressing at the local pub. Their only source of light is the shitty little camcorder? Really?
It's rather useful to film horror films with a camcorder nowadays: 1) it's so much cheaper than capturing everything on film, 2) the audiences love that crap; anything that looks shaky, grainy or unfocused is immediately associated with "CNN-like news realism", and 3) the special-effects department doesn't have to work on full mode because who's going to notice that the ravaged corpse is badly done or that the zombie's make-up is shoddy when only a fraction of a blurry second of the camcorder's precious time is spent on showing it to us? You can always press "pause" though, to check whether the CGI and make-up are up to your desired standard, but then – why bother prolonging this average movie experience.
Though far from me to suggest that it's only about the wild baboon (that btw might also be Sasqwatch, in which case ignore my little diatribe about baboons rarely getting shots at cinema glory). Eventually "Evidence" becomes a zombie movie as well, temporarily nudging the baboon into sub-plot territory. The baboon, not too keen on playing second fiddle and anyway already quite used to being the star of the movie, reappears just to show those silly zombies who's the boss here. From that point on it's basically zombies and the baboon fighting over the right to scare (or kill) the two girls. The girls don't care; they're just happy to scream and run, as that saves them the bother of having to learn actual lines of dialogue.
What I'm saying is: the first part of the movie is "Blair Witch" (i.e. nothing happens, apart from vague threats from somewhere out there), then a wild baboon makes its appearance (making chimps and gorillas all over the world very envious), eventually shredding the male half of the cast into bits, and then the movie finally shows its true colours: just another computer game about a secret military hangar where morally dubious scientific experiments had backfired, turning people into blood-thirsty zombies, while a Nintendo soldier tries to shoot as many monsters as he can. I think every 9 year-old already knows this premise by heart, down to its finest, most moronic/cliché details.
This movie's absolute highlight occurs only 3 minutes into the movie, when the sexy blond (Abigail Richie) flashes her boobs. That was a stop-and-rewind-and-drool-worthy moment, unlike the following 15 minutes which is barely-control-the-urge-to-fast-forward.
I'd rather someone had pointed the camera at her getting naked. That way we'd have a top-notch porn movie instead of this low-notch zombie/baboon film. A naked Abigail getting down and dirty in bed certainly beats watching her pretty head being blown off, mere minutes before the end of this computer game. Why didn't the average-looking brunette get her golova blown to bits?
The girls escape time and time again – on foot – while both their boyfriends got pummeled with ease. Perhaps the baboon is less prone to attacking owners of breasts? Over and over the girls keep entering secret installations, houses, and other property – and yet it takes them ages to finally bump into anyone. After figuring out that the baboon resides outside, i.e. loves the outdoors, why would the girls keep opening doors to get out after they'd finally found a place to hide in? But I keep forgetting that this is merely a computer game.
The premise is what "we're making a documentary on Brett"? Ridiculous; a poor excuse to send zombie fodder into the woods. They couldn't even bother to come up with a half-way valid excuse for the teens to meet the baboon and the zombies.
If I could get a penny for every time someone says "stop filming!" or "keep filming!", I'd have have enough money to shoot "Avatar 2" (with the blue putzes as the bad guys). It's one of the most annoying clichés of the silly camcorder genre. The writers of these films are always in a dilemma how to solve the very obvious illogicality of the camera rolling at all times, so they desperately seek out new ways to justify it being turned on. In this movie, the camcorder's main raison-d'etre (or raison-de-REC) happens to be that "the camera is the best light we've got right now", at least for a while. Not a bad try, but how about when there IS enough light? Well, then "keep shooting coz we need evidence!" Evidence of the director's incompetence? They sure got plenty of that on tape.
"I don't know why I'm not turning this stupid thing (camera) off," moans the sexy blond. I'll tell you why, honey: because this lame hand-held-camera horror flick wouldn't exist without it, and without the REC button being "on" at all times you'd still be waitressing at the local pub. Their only source of light is the shitty little camcorder? Really?
It's rather useful to film horror films with a camcorder nowadays: 1) it's so much cheaper than capturing everything on film, 2) the audiences love that crap; anything that looks shaky, grainy or unfocused is immediately associated with "CNN-like news realism", and 3) the special-effects department doesn't have to work on full mode because who's going to notice that the ravaged corpse is badly done or that the zombie's make-up is shoddy when only a fraction of a blurry second of the camcorder's precious time is spent on showing it to us? You can always press "pause" though, to check whether the CGI and make-up are up to your desired standard, but then – why bother prolonging this average movie experience.