Directed by: Eduardo Sanchez

Starring: Samuel Davis, Dora Madison Burge, Roger Edwards

A group of thrill-seeking pricks are hunted by a big smelly monkey in this derivative plop from the director of The Blair Witch Project.

You’d be correct to say that the ‘found footage’ genre has seen a rise in popularity in the fifteen years since The Blair Witch Project first terrified the world, and pioneering director Eduardo Sanchez has attempted to best his low budget hit a few times in the years since.

He’s had a go at aliens in the largely-ignored-but-serviceable ‘Altered’, psychological spookery in ‘Lovely Molly’ and even zombies in VHS 2’s segment ‘A Ride in the Park’, but they have all struggled to match the impact originality of his first tale of woodland witchery.

Honestly, I didn’t think a lot of The Blair Witch Project, but i think my derision is largely because I watched it only a few years ago, and i had already seen my fair share of incredible found-footage movies. Genre fatigue is a very real problem, with horror especially (and found-footage even more especially) and it’s one of the biggest problems Sanchez’s recent efforts fail to address. I mean sure, he invented the basic blueprint for this genre and he’ll always have a place in it’s history, but many other filmmakers have taken his platform and iterated on it in various ways, creating action-packed gore thrillers like [REC], large-scale monster epics such as Cloverfield, and even superhero drama in 2012’s under-rated ‘Chronicle’.

For genre loyalists, Exists gets two immediate massive red flags because it’s a) a found-footage film, and b) centered around a group of thrill-seeking teenagers heading out to a secluded cabin for some rad BMX riding and naughty sex having. It does gain some originality points for featuring the Sasquatch, a cryptid the horror genre very rarely sees as an antagonist, but unfortunately that’s about as creative as Exists gets.

It relies on woefully boring stereotypes, predictable frights and poor pacing to fill out the rest of it’s runtime, and it’s packed full of moments that make you want to leap into the film and punch the characters in the face. Add to that a bafflingly sentimental ending that heavy-handedly rams home the clichéd idea that “man’s disrespect of nature is the real monster”, and you have a film that doesn’t really manage to do anything new or exciting over the course of an hour and a half.

There’s plenty of ‘action’ if you’re comparing it to most found-footage dross, but i couldn’t help noticing that – for a film centred around an enraged, hyper-strong feral monster – there’s very little in the way of meaty violence for even the most casual gorehounds to sink their teeth into. The most graphic moment in the film (a snapped shin bone poking out of the skin) failed to shock me simply because it’s an easy gore gag that’s shown up a lot in horror films lately.

I can’t even recommend Exists as a found-footage Bigfoot film when there are movies like Bobcat Goldthwaite’s Willow Creek on the horizon, which delivers a far more claustrophobic and effective dose of sasquatchian terror, more in the vein of (ironically) The Blair Witch Project. I can honestly say at this point that i’d be more interested in seeing what Sanchez can do when he turns his hand to directing a traditional horror film *outside* the sub-genre he helped create, but i wonder whether he’ll just stick to his pattern of swapping out the villain with another obscure cryptid every couple of years instead.

But hey, what do I know? Come and see me in ten years when Sanchez’s found-footage Chupacabra film is taking the world by storm and I’ll gladly admit how wrong I am.

1/5