Exists (2014)

Movie Info

Why does it feel like somebody’s watching me?

Matt (Samuel Davis) and Brian (Chris Osborn) have “borrowed” the keys to their uncle’s cabin in the Texas countryside.  Travelling with their friends Elizabeth (Denise Williamson), Todd (Roger Edwards), and Dora (Dora Madison) to the countryside, the trip is almost derailed when a strange animal is struck crossing the deserted road.  At the cabin, Matt, Brian, Elizabeth, Todd, and Dora quickly discover that there is something in the woods and it is angry.  They are being hunted, and the creature is unstoppable.

Written and directed by Eduardo Sánchez (with additional scripting by Jamie Nash), Exists is a found footage horror film.  The movie premiered at South by Southwest and received an internet release on October 3, 2014 with a limited release later in the month.

The Blair Witch Project sparked a new found footage craze, and Sánchez as one of the co-creators of the movie was right there at the onset.  Exists feels like a throwback to The Blair Witch Project with some modernizations involving Go-Pros and other smaller camera tech.  It also has some of the same problems as The Blair Witch Project.

When will obnoxious twenty-somethings with cameras stop going into the woods?

A lot of found-footage movies have the same basic principle problem…the set-up has to feel natural and there has to be a reason to keep shooting footage.  In this movie, they are aided by the car accident near the beginning of the film that allows some early action instead of the typical “here’s a day in a life of these rather obnoxious characters”.  The Bigfoot aspect is introduced early, but the characters have little to do except make bad choices over and over again throughout the movie (like the typical “let’s take a shortcut to save time”).

The cast is meant to be annoying but they are too good at it.  The “bros” nature of the characters and the fact that they want to make viral videos works heavily against making them sympathetic.  They have all the clichés complete from the sporty guy, the camera guy (who also plays the “let’s make fun of the monster” character), the underdeveloped girlfriends, and the character who literally states “Black people don’t do this s*@!, man” but proceeds to become a bad cliché.  Ironically, Brian Steele who plays Bigfoot also played the nice Bigfoot in Harry and the Hendersons.

This is your “I’m so sorry” moment…don’t blow it (and avoid the snot)

Found footage has the shaky-video issue which allows low budget productions of horror movies.  While this was extreme in The Blair Witch Project (which made sense and helped originate it), it started to get problematic due to improvements in technology.  They do a slightly better job here and they do allow you to see the monster which is a step up.  It still however is a problem of the genre.

Overall, Exists isn’t bad because it is as it promises to be…campers vs. Bigfoot.  It isn’t horribly long and most of the scares are where you’d expect them, but it is at least a kind of original telling of the story and not just a remake or a rehash.  It does little to change or advance the type of storytelling, but it is a quick, brutal tale with a bit of schadenfreude mixed in.