About.com Rating

The Bottom Line

Spooky and well acted "found footage" film that falls apart at the end.



Pros

• Scary
• Good acting
• Tense realism

Cons

• Vague/unexplained plot elements
• Musical score
• Bad title

Description

• Starring Laurel Casillo, Morgan Hooper, Ryan Maslyn, Elyssa Mersdorf, Torrey Weiss
• Directed by Dominic Perez
• Rated R
• DVD Release Date: August 9, 2011

Guide Review - 'Evil Things' DVD Review

In January 2009, five New York City college students -- Tanya, Mark, Cassy, Miriam and Leo (an aspiring filmmaker who videotapes everything) -- head off for a weekend in the country celebrating Miriam's 21st birthday at her aunt's remote wooded home.

They were never heard from again.

A couple months later, a video tape is anonymously delivered to the FBI. It contains the footage Leo shot that weekend. In it, they're menaced by a mysterious figure that, well, does "evil things." To give details would

Evil Things feels like a movie designed to make me wet my pants. It's basically The Blair Witch Project meets The Strangers -- two of the films that have most freaked me out in the theater -- with a touch of another freaky movie in its own right, David Lynch's Lost Highway. While it has some moments that border on the terrifying, however, the fact that Evil Things ultimately didn't stick with me (pants = dry) is telling.

Evil Things does a lot of things well. The cast is very good, maintaining the sort of ad-libby naturalness that is vital for a "found footage"/POV movie to succeed. The setup is simple but chillingly relatable, playing upon our fear of the unknown. The direction effectively generates scares via overwhelming anticipation of what's to come.

And yet, when "it" does come, the impact is significantly less than the buildup, for several reasons. First, there's music. If this is an "authentic" video of an actual incident, why are there musical cues? Did the killer do some post-production work on it? Second, there's too much confusion over who/what the antagonist is, what his/her motives are and if there's even just one of him/her. Some scenes have him/her appearing in two places at once, others have him/her making some odd Predator-like noise (sort of like the baddies in Them, but at least that's explained) that insinuates something otherworldly, while the final "reveal" of the killer's motivation feels vague and forced.

Finally, there just isn't enough going on in the latter portion of the movie. The final 20 minutes leading up to the climax is rushed in comparison to the hour or so preceding it, leaving precious little "cat-and-mouse" action. To add insult to injury, the middle of the film is padded out with an uneventful, 10-minute red herring excursion into the woods that plays like a poor man's homage to Blair Witch.

Still, Evil Things is entertaining -- at time, downright pulse-pounding -- for stretches. In our current glut of "found footage" films, it stands out for its strong execution, genuine creepiness and innovative switching of POV from the victims to the killer -- granted, that would mean that the killer spliced his video into the victims', which is indicative of the movie's frustrating shortcomings.

The DVD

Special features include bonus footage.

Movie: B-
DVD: D-



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