Movie review: Exists

Cast: Samuel Davis, Dora Madison Burge, Roger Edwards
Director: Eduardo Sanchez
Running time: 84 mins
Rating: M (horror, violence, offensive language, drug use)

Verdict: A predictable and manipulative horror

In 1997, director Eduardo Sanchez and his University of Central Florida classmate Dan Myrick wrote, directed and edited one of the most profitable films ever made, The Blair Witch Project.

A terrifying and brilliantly marketed film, it popularised the "found footage" genre where a story is told through video or film footage left behind by missing, pursued or deceased characters.

With Exists, Sanchez returns to the genre, but this time rather than creating a world-wide cultural phenomenon he's brought the genre into question. As we watch five college friends in the remote Texan countryside being hunted down by a hairy, violent sasquatch, the constantly distracting thought is - "is now really a good time to be filming?"

The found footage genre should make sense at a time when kids have GoPro cameras attached to their helmets and people are obsessed with putting their lives on YouTube, just like the character Brian (Chris Osborn) in this film. But to attract attention online it helps to have some charisma and personality, none of which is to be found among the characters on display here.

In a horror film there's normally at least one character you can't wait to get knocked off; in this case they're all ripe for the picking.

Exists kicks off as Brian, his older brother and a bunch of his friends are driving to their uncle's cabin when in the darkness they hit something on the road. Unperturbed by the unidentifiable screams they hear or the scary image they capture on one of their cameras, they carry on when most of us would turn back.

There's little original about the way the next few days unfold as Big Foot gives the city kids a weekend they'll never forget, but Sanchez uses tried and tested horror techniques and they're unrelenting and enough to, at times, be scary. Thank goodness Brian had enough batteries and is really good at running with a camera, otherwise Exists could have ended more abruptly.

- TimeOut