Evil Things

Written by Bamboo

On January 9th 2009, five college students left New York City for a weekend in the country. 48 hours later they vanished without a trace. There were no leads and no evidence … until now. (Meaning the video we are watching was found.) You get to see the movie on a hand held camera from one of the people alone on this adventure. It’s Miriam’s 21st Birthday. Miriam’s Aunt Gail lends Miriam her beautiful country house for the weekend as her birthday present. This country house is surrounded by breathtaking mountains and miles and miles of woods. Interestingly enough there appears to be no cell phones anywhere in this movie, which I find hard to believe when five college kids take a weekend trip. I mean it can’t be that there isn’t any reception for anyone wherever this house is. Anyway, Miriam invites her college buddies Cassy, Mark, Tanya, and Leo to join her at the country house for the weekend.

Leo is the aspiring filmmaker in the group, and most of the movie is seen from his camera. There are many scenes where it doesn’t make any sense for him to be recording, and a few scenes where the group says “turn that camera off!” or something to that effect. Regardless, he keeps the movie going in hopes of making a documentary of his weekend trip. The group is all gung ho about a party weekend with good food and cold beer, but before the group even makes it to the house, they encounter trouble in the form of a creepy van that follows and aggressively drives around them.

The van appears when they stop for gas, then again when they stop to eat. It’s not really scary, and I found that having three women yelling and screaming at the same time to be terribly annoying.  They make it out to the house for the weekend, and after a night in the house they take a hike to the woods. They spend the trip arguing about being lost. The video now starts to look like the Blair Witch Project with a little less humor and a little more arguing. Back at the house there is a little humor with the group as Casey does a mom impression for the group. As they eat dinner the house phone rings a few times with no one there, and there is a knock at the door and we don’t get to see who it is.

I was unable to get myself into the movie enough to be scared at all, but at least this wasn’t a horror movie where the people kept running up stairs and doing other stupid things I feel I would never do in that situation. So in a weird twist, the strange knock at the door leaves a tape that the group watches “ring” style.  It ends up being a video of them taken from the van that followed them on their way to the house.  Seeing the video of them sleeping gives a little scary feeling I suppose, and makes it seem like we are headed toward a home invasion. As the group tries to leave and is confronted by the mysterious van again, the camera view switches back and forth from the view of the vans camera and the view we are used to seeing. We never get to see the stalkers, all we ever see is the van, and the end is shot through a view of the stalkers’ / killers’ camera which is a nice scene.

I didn’t really care much for Evil Things, it follows the formula you’ve seen before.  It’s a lower budget film, clearly, and I have never been a fan of POV movies.  Evil Things is an entertaining indie horror film that tries to goes back to the basics and scare us without actually showing us a monster or anything supernatural.