The Place For The Latest Movie Reviews
Cast: Elyssa Mersdorf, Laurel Casillo, Morgan Hooper, Ryan Maslyn, Gail Cadden
On January 9th 2009, 5 college students left New York City for a weekend in the country. 48 hours later, all 5 students simply vanished without a trace. There were no leads and no evidence...until now.
There certainly has been a lot of these "found footage" movies since "Blair Witch" came out, some have been good and some just plain bad. "Evil Things" is a decent entry into the genre but it too has a few problems. First off lets talk about the film, the story is about five college friends getting ready for a trip to the mountains for Miriam's 21st birthday. Miriam's Aunt Gayle has provided the group with a cabin and after a slight misunderstanding, the group settles in for their wonderful weekend out of the city.
However, before the weekend ends, the five friends are in fear for their lives as someone unknown to them has followed them from the city and is playing a psychological game with their heads.
The first night they get drunk and have a great birthday celebration. The next day the five go on a hike to look for ancient Native cave drawings and they become lost in the woods. After hours and hours of searching, night has fallen, the group is getting scared and nervous, they are finally steered in the correct direction by the "animals" that they are hearing. Thankful to have "found" their way back to the cabin, they head inside to get warmth and food.
Later on in the night, the phone rings but no one is on the other end and there is a knock at the door. When they answer it, they find a package. The contents of the package freak the group out and they try to flee their surroundings and get back to civilization. However, it may be too late as each of the group go missing and there are no clues as to what or who is tormenting them.
Now on to how I felt about the film, the few problems I had with it was the slow start the film had, it seemed to drag on for way too long and I can see many people becoming bored by it and shutting it off before it begins to get good. Also I don't believe the characters were introduced enough to really care about them later on when it really mattered which goes back to the slow beginning, there was plenty of time to develop them enough to give the audience something to invest in, this is not a major problem later on in the film but I thought a little more time spent on letting the audience get to know the characters would of made the film better over-all.
On the good side Director Dominic Perez shows in his debut that he is more than capable of creating a horror film with some very scary moments. There are quite a few frightening moments in the film and it pretty much holds it's creepy feel for much of the film. Another thing I liked was the person doing all this to these young men and women is never seen, I always like that in a film because it allows the audience to use their imagination a lot more which helps in creating the right mood and atmosphere. As far as the acting goes I thought the entire cast was excellent and the all gave realistic performances which is very important in movies like this. "Evil Things" could of been better but over-all it's a very impressive debut for the director and is above average compared to most of the other films like it that have come out. If you like the genre I recommend picking it up and checking it out for yourself, just be patient early on and you will be rewarded later. You can order the DVD HERE.
Released by Inception Media Group
*** 1/2 Out Of *****