Exists (2014)

Heading into the woods, a group of friends looking for a weekend of partying and fun find their trip interrupted by an aggressive Bigfoot in the area who is not pleased with their actions and forces them to fight it off in order to get away alive.This one was a somewhat lackluster and not really all that intriguing effort with a few bright spots about it. One of the few great parts here is the fact that this one really does take great advantage of the viciousness that Bigfoot imparts upon the group in order to assert his dominance in the location as that's accomplished solely through intense, brutal attacks. From the early hints that he's out there, with the shrieking and howling off in the dense woodlands to the brief clip of it watching them in the woods that was caught on the camera, there's a great sense that something's out there with them, and that once it leads into the attacks there's a rather intense energy put into these scenes. The two big scenes here include the first foot-chase through the woods as there's the incredibly tense feel of it coming after the rider and hiding amongst the dense trees coming after him, and the first attack in the cabin is really chilling with this one offering plenty of of thrills due to the unrelenting ferocity it utilizes trying to get it, the chaos that erupts as they try to maintain a way of escaping to the different sections of the house as the barricades fail letting it continually get deeper inside as there's a great deal of action involved here. As well, this carries into the final twenty minutes of this one which is all pretty much non-stop encounters and attacks that get carried out to great lengths with this one getting plenty of fun with the constant chases throughout the woods and the surrounding areas of the woods that leads to the creature's chase back to the camper and leading through to the big finale that comes off a little rushed but still has some great ideas about it. Along with the rather nice Bigfoot costume that looks rather imposing and fearful, it's about all this one has since the main part of this film is just overall bland for the most part. The fact that this one focuses as much as it does on following this much on the group which is so bland and meaningless that it just doesn't go anywhere being filled with obnoxious characters doing nothing of interest and holding the creature back for so few scenes where it hardly ever appears. The frantic action of the second half comes because it hardly ever appears beforehand with the beginning filled with not a whole lot of interesting facets and that gives this one such a long- winded first half. The other flaw here against this one is the utterly ridiculous and unneeded found- footage aspect of the film which basically runs through the entire gamut of familiar flaws present, which includes the inability to see what's going on as well as keeping the scenes impossible to make out that you want to see, and even the utterly insipid notion of filming sequences that shouldn't be due to keeping yourself in harm's way instead of defending yourself. These here hold it back from what it could've been.Rated R: Graphic Language, Violence, drug use and a brief, blurry sex scene.

Well this is a film by numbers no thought, original ideas, barely anything to redeem this sorry mess. Apparently by the same bloke who did the Blair Witch Hunt, if I see another found footage film I will pluck my eyes out with a spoon. Here we have the original idea of five friends going to a deserted cabin in the woods, wow never heard of that one before, we quickly establish by their boorish behaviour, setting fireworks off in a forest, setting fire to a beard, not watching where they are driving, these our characters we have no empathy for, the dialogue is abysmal and acting paper thin. They hit the child of bigfoot when driving and kill it bigfoot is naturally hacked off and proceeds to kill them all, great, by now we are all rooting for the guy in the monkey suit. It has it's unintentional funny moments, as no money was spared for special effects and I mean this literally. If you enjoy a bloke running around a forest in a monkey suit this is right up your street, awful movie and how it is sold as a horror movie baffles me.

Exists is a good example for found footage done right. It isn't as annoying as i found many of those movies to be, with Evidence and Area 407 being some of the worst i've seen. The characters act understandable most of the time. They mostly try to survive and don't try to be the hero. The most important part for me though, is that there really aren't any obnoxious characters, shouting the whole movie just crap, like in my 2 examples. Another important point for me is the quality of the visuals and the effects. WETA did a good job with the special effects and everything about it looks really good. And the movie looks great. It's no "we do found footage, because we can't buy a good camera" movie. Sánchez used good cameras and he also clearly liked the work with a GoPro on his segment for V/H/S2.In short: It's a good looking found footage movie about Bigfoot, without super annoying characters. Definitely worth a watch, if you'd ask me.

The thing that annoys me about the majority of these 1st person/found footage "Horror" Movies is that were these situations real, the last thing any normal, sane individual would do is continue filming, especially with a camera as big as this guy carries. The premise is good - friends come out to "cabin in the woods" and are hunted by Bigfoot. Nice idea, in this case badly implemented. There is absolutely no need for this to be 1st person perspective if the storyline and script were strong enough. Sadly, neither are. They hit something with their vehicle en route to the cabin and later - when there is only a couple of them left alive, they begin wondering what they have done to have this Sasquatch hunt them in this manner "we've done nothing wrong" one of them repeats. Not even then do they think to add two and two together. When "hiding" in the abandoned caravan(or trailer for our American Cousins) our Hero's first instinct while watching his friend get dragged of to his death by Mr Sasquatch is to film it all in glorious technicolour. Even when the Hairy guy is dragging him to the burial ground, he refuses to be separated from his beloved camera. 1st Person/Found Footage is an interesting genre if handled correctly, sadly so many movies aren't and this i'm sad to say is definitely one of them.