Review: Evil Things (2011)

Let's be honest here for a minute and admit that most Found Footage flicks are pretty shitty; they tend to be bumbling, silly, nonsensical, nauseating, and frustrating on the whole. Evil Things, however, got the whole FF thing mostly right. Mostly.

Evil Things is the story about a group of film students who head into the deep, snowy woods to make a documentary about students getting away for a weekend into the deep snowy woods. Groundbreaking stuff, I know.

Then again, film students can be pretentious. You know I'm right, Film Students, so just take the feedback and move on...

The icy road of pretentious death.

Anywho, the gang of future commercial directors find themselves being followed and toyed with by a creepy rape-van on the way to their vacation home. No one calls the Police though, because then there would be no movie. Arriving at their vacation house after a fairly strenuous drive, the friends settle in and all is well... until they decide to hike through the woods, get lost, and nearly freeze to death finding their way back to the house in the dark. All the while, creepy noises persist.

Maybe he just wants to party?

Once back in the house, all is well again... until the creepy phone calls begin! Still, no one calls the Cops. After a few creepy calls in a row, someone knocks at the front door, and leaves them a present; a videotape of them from the start of their trip until now. Needless to say, shit gets crazy from here on out. Also, the Cops are still not notified of the ongoing shenanigans.

Before I say anything nice about this movie, and I'm going to, let's get this out of the way; this movie is in many ways your typical "group of kids in the woods/everyone does the dumbest shit in the world" type of Horror flick. It gets really annoying in parts, but that's how it goes in this genre.

Just sit there and cry, and maybe the bad man will go away on his own.

That being said, for a cheap Found Footage/POV flick, Evil Things manages to do a lot of things right. This movie was genuinely creepy. It had down-time, stretches of inactivity if you will, but for the most part all of it added to the atmosphere more than detracted from it. The characters seemed like real people, thanks to an admirable job done by the cast. Some of them annoyed us a bit, and some of them did some utterly stupid shit, but we still liked them, and above all, they felt real.

Why do Jewish girls always get shafted on their Birthday? Oy!

We had a few issues with the movie, most of which seem present in just about all Horror movies these days, but they still deserve mention: When someone threatening is creeping around outside of your house in the dark, why are all of the lights still on, and why are you standing in front of the windows? When trying to hide in the dark, why are you using flashlights and the camera light, when it does nothing but gives you away? And the worst part of the Hand Held/POV genre... under such crazy intense situations, and we're talking life and death here, who would honestly film everything? That will never sit completely right with us, but we get it and can accept it, as long as the movie is good.

Also, no one called the Cops. Why did no one call the Cops!

Should have stayed behind the couch, dummy.

For what it is, and despite the annoying trappings of the Found Footage sub-genre, Evil Things is a good little movie. Creepy and effective, we found ourselves biting our proverbial nails more than once during this one. If you're down with atmospheric Horror movies that get under your skin and skeeve you out, this one's for you.

C+

Laurel Casillo is a sexy thing, and so is that blonde.