Evidence - Movie Review

Evidence
2013
Dir. Olatunde Osunsanmi

I didn't want to do it, guys.  I know how many people out there hate spoilers and I tend to spoil movies in my reviews more often than not BUT I usually try to withhold from spoilers with twist endings and surprise killers in movies.  However, the twist ending in this movie is its ONLY SAVING GRACE.  So I kind of have to do it in order to give a complete review, but if you don't want to know who the killer is, just, um, don't read the last couple paragraphs? (Sowwy.)

That aside, Evidence started out great.  For about all of three minutes.  Our movie begins in 2012 in Kidwell, Nevada with a wide angle shot on a crime scene.  Fire ablaze, cops and coroners in mid-motion, everything and everyone frozen in time as the camera pans and zooms with ease on a disembodied arm, an incinerated body, a flipped shuttle bus, and a video camera being confiscated as evidence.  Everything is in bright vivid overly-contrasted colors with intense music playing and it is awesome.

Then we have about an hour and twenty-five minutes of crap.  Detectives Reese and Burquez are on task to review the video evidence recovered from the crime scene, on which we meet Leann, an aspiring actress, Rachel a documentary filmmaker, and Tyler, Leann's emo boyfriend who proposes to her at the beginning of the movie and gets hit with a,"No, I can't."  Ouch, it burns.  Even after the cold rejection, Tyler, Leann, and Rachel set off on a shuttle bus for a Vegas vacation they had been planning.  Their fellow passengers are Vicki, a dancer from Russia, Stephen a teenage magician, and a strange redhead middle-aged woman carrying a duffle bag full of cash.

All of this footage, by the way, is shot through Rachel's handheld camera with her as the narrator and she is annoying as balls and she never gets any less annoying throughout the movie.  She is snarky and conceited and snippy and none of it in a charming way.  Anyway, Ben, the shuttle driver ends up taking them down a back road as a shortcut to get through to Vegas when all of a sudden the bus runs over some barbed wire and flips.  Everyone is alive but shaken up and head out to the nearest abandoned dusty town full of vehicles and sheds to search for a phone.

Shut up, Rachel.

One by one, our characters drop like flies.  There is a healthy amount of tension builds, jump scares, and creepy, dark, abandoned building exploration throughout the film.  We are led to believe that our killer (who by the way is wearing a welding helmet and apron and wielding a torch) is supposed to be Gerald, a PTSD-suffering retired army sergeant married to Trina, aforementioned crazy redhead on the bus.  Gerald spent a fair amount of time in a mental institution and 90 grand was cleared out of his account two days prior.  We see Stephen, Vicki, and Ben lose their lives (allegedly) by way of stabbing, burning, and various other means of generic horror flick death. 

 

At this point, I'm getting a little frustrated because every time there's an intense scene and the camera falls out of someone's hands, the action taking place lands perfectly in-frame.  I sigh and yell, "C'mon, found footage film, be original!  Be realistic!  Have the camera film a wall for five minutes while someone gets flambeed in the background!"  As the film progresses, we learn that Gerald is dead and wanted Trina to take all his money and go to Vegas, but oops, Trina gets her throat slit by Mr. Welder Man.  There's also one part of the film where Mr. Welder writes "Fear Me As You Fear God" on a bathroom mirror in blood and then takes cellphone selfie footage of himself in the mirror and I cackle at the absurdity.

Gotta get my best angle.

So now our detectives realize that this whole thing was planned by the killer and that he is smart and meticulous and purposely wants them to see this footage.  Then they start to think, "Why did Ben take them down this back road on a nonstop trip to Vegas and how did he know there would conveniently be this rest stop nearby?"  Ben, the bus driver, becomes our prime suspect.  Eventually Mr. Welder attacks Rachel and sets her on fire and then the whole building blows up.  Just as the welder is taking off his mask, the footage freezes and this is the last file on the camera.  OR IS IT?  Suddely the detectives learn that all of this video footage has been leaked on the news as a snuff film after their server has been hacked.  Leann, after being brought into the police station for questioning, reveals that before Stephen died, he was choking on something.  Something like an SD card.

HERE'S WHERE THE SPOILERY STUFF HAPPENS

 

On this secret footage, we find out that Tyler, the emo boyfriend, killed Stephen for spying on him and Leann arguing.  Tyler is the killer!!  But wait, the detectives realize that the time codes on the footage aren't breaking with the film glitches - they're not glitches, they're EDITS.  It is revealed that Leann is the other killer and Rachel is still alive.  Yep, they were all in this together, they planned this, they finally made their masterpiece movie with miss aspiring actress Leann as the star damsel in distress.  The movie then gives us a quick flashback of all the footage that wasn't seen in the previous hour and a half, showing how they committed all the murders, all the quick costume changes into the welder gear, etcetera etcetera.  My jaw drops and I chuckle to myself because after suffering through an hour and a half of stupidity, this twist is executed quite well and now I'm sitting here wondering if I actually liked this movie afterall.

Does anyone else experience this like I do?  You sit through a movie being bored, disappointed, unimpressed, but then something so badass happens at the end, you're like "Well, crap, now I like it" but you don't want like it?  Ah, so conflicting!!  I totally appreciate the typical bait and switch setup of Ben supposedly being the killer and then I started to figure Leann might be the killer or even Tyler but I didn't put together that it was all three of them and that they had meticulously planned this from weeks before.  And then I go, "A-ha, there's actually a reason why every time the camera was dropped, they landed precisely in frame!!"  They got their footage on all the major media outlets, they're famous, mission accomplished.

However, one question remains, why did Ben take them down that back road if it was supposed to be a nonstop trip to Vegas?  Dun, dun, dun...

-Amanda

My Bloody Valentine - Movie Review

My Bloody Valentine
1981
Directed by George Mihalka
Spoiler Free!

Happy Valentine's Day!  Whether you're single or attached, I hope you're spending today anywhere other than a sad little mining town in Canada.  My Bloody Valentine takes place in just such a backwater, haunted by the specter of its dark past.

The story goes: 20 years ago, while the townspeople twisted away at the Valentine's Day Dance, a terrible mine accident trapped 5 men underground.  After a rescue effort that took several weeks, they pulled one survivor from the dark: Harry Warden.  Having resorted to cannibalism, Warden was now deeply insane.  A year quietly passed.  Then, on the next Valentine's Day, Harry Warden returned to murder the two supervisors responsible for the accident with a pick ax.  He left their hearts in heart-shaped chocolate boxes with notes warning the town never to have a Valentine's Day Dance again!

For 20 years, the warning had been heeded.  That is, until now.  The dance is back on, and it seems Harry has returned.  Hearts and bodies pop up everywhere as the sheriff and mayor deal with the crisis.  A group of young people (the men work in the mine, the women.... put up Valentine's Day decorations) are insistent that the Valentine's Day Dance go ahead.  When the sheriff cancels it, they plan to break into the rec-area of the mine and hold it anyways.

By the end, the body count is growing, and the remaining characters are left to race through the mines, running from the gas-masked madman.

With a title like My Bloody Valentine, one would expect this to be a slasher schlock-fest complete with terrible music, college-girls in bras, and plenty of gratuitous violence.  I'm not gonna say My Bloody Valentine LACKS those things, but it does manage to conduct itself without ever falling deep into the pit of Bad Movie-dom.

If you go into My Bloody Valentine expecting art, you will be disappointed.  If you go in expecting a fun horror movie, you will be rewarded with chocolate.

Or organ meats... whichever.

The pacing is perfect.  Dread is accomplished quickly and succinctly, particularly in the first-person stalking scenes.  Storytelling is a thing this movie does at all, which in turn means that we get definition on the many characters.  And it does so without forcing us to watch the actors exchange terrible, blunt, tired lines of dialogue about their backstories that are so bleakly generic that they might as well have been making seal-sounds (or perhaps my angst about the remake is bleeding in here- Orp, orp,orp!).

Speaking of characters, from the sheriff to the twenty-somethings, the players are distinct enough to keep straight, and some are even lovable.  For example, Hollis, a bearlike, mustached guy who is actually responsible, yet also a pretty cool dude in a committed, caring relationship with his lady.  Of course, there's plenty of sexism and a love triangle, but near the end these problems begin to shift in subtle ways.  The two guys fighting over a girl completely put aside their differences to make sure everyone gets out of the mine alive.  Relationships are sometimes portrayed as... actual relationships that include things other than banging.  The authority figures do things authority figures would, which includes not telling the youngsters jackshit.  Also, there's a deeply sad moment involving the sheriff and a box of chocolates that hints at how the adults are also leading their own complicated and emotional lives.

Then, we get to my favorite part: the makeup and practical effects.  My Bloody Valentine comes off as a bit coy when it comes to gore.  This may have been because the MPAA cut 9 minutes of "gore" from the feature before its release.  But whatever the cause, the effect is that we don't have to spend long stretches of time staring as a person gurgles.  In fact, we frequently only get glimpses of the kills, reminiscent of the man who got his eyes pecked out by finches in The Birds (only not quite as classy).  However, when we do get a look at the gore, it's very well-done.  There's no "Here, let me wet toilet-paper and stick it to your face, then over-use my stippling sponge- HOLD STILL" in this movie.  It's as if the make-up department actually bothered to look up the difference between someone who gets third degree burns from boiling water, and someone who gets burns from being left in an industrial dryer overnight.

Of course, there's plenty about My Bloody Valentine that evokes giggles rather than gasps.  The villain is distinctly Darth Vader-y.  The opening scene is basically all you ever need to know about a slasher movie ever- it's so cliche that it's like a warm hug from a teddy-bear.  The twist-ending is visible from a mile away, and the plot plays it by the book.

But what made me enjoy My Bloody Valentine is how right it gets it.  All the genetic markers for slasher movies are here, and done very well.  In my opinion, the thing that makes a good slasher movie is not how scary it is, but rather the chord it strikes.  Slasher-movies ought to be a thrilling admixture of schadenfruede, creepiness. laughs, and investment in the characters.  They're the campfire stories about hooks on cardoors.  Their purpose is to compel teenagers to clutch each other, then chuckle awkwardly, not stay with those teens until 3 o'clock staring at the ceiling.  Thus, with this being my personal rubric for slasher-flicks, I think My Bloody Valentine is a good one.  Perhaps not the greatest of all time, but a solid entry.

-Joanna