Exists screens several more times at SXSW 2014 and has international, but not US, distribution as of this writing.
Bigfoot is scary again. Or at the very least director Eduardo Sanchez (The Blair Witch Project) is trying to make you believe Bigfoot is scary again. And he largely succeeds with regards to the creature. Our Sasquatch is big, brutal, looks great from a design perspective, is seen clearly, and even has somewhat of a character arc. There’s also some great jump scares and set pieces to get your heart racing, especially if you are ever able to see it in a theater. Outside of the actual creature itself, though, quite a few problems arise.
In all, I think the film is a success in what it sets out to do. Exists is a pulse-pounding, low-to-mid-budget found footage creature feature that probably cost little enough to become a hit. Sanchez and his team knew the movie they were creating and they cranked it out with confidence. But Exists is a film that genuinely suffers by being brought forth into a post Cabin In The Woods world. That film was so ingenious in its layered homage/deconstruction of “horrible things that happen in the woods movies” that an earnest, stripped down, and fairly formulaic horror set up like Exists feels on the nose and lacks self-awareness. I guess you could argue that Exists takes a page out of the Evil Dead remake’s book of the dead by, instead of reinventing the wheel, going balls out in the direction of pure visceral tones of terror. After some act one shenanigans, Exists really gets down to business and there aren’t a lot of laughs or gags to be found. Any time that I found myself laughing came after I jumped out of my seat due to a night-visiony Sasquatch sighting.
And that is where the true fun of this movie shines. It doesn’t push the envelope nearly as much as Evil Dead (2013), nor is it the smartest guy in the room like Cabin In The Woods. It just has fun with its Sasquatch set pieces. Which is enough to recommend the film as an entertaining way to spend a hundred minutes, but not enough to cement it as a horror classic by any stretch. It is probably one of the best Bigfoot movies ever made… but it has been a while since my last Bigfoot binge, so I can’t offer any researched rankings just yet.
But that set up, though. I’m not kidding when I tell you that Exists stars a gaggle of college aged friends heading out to a lake to party in their uncle’s long-abandoned cabin. That’s it. That’s the set up. Some title cards tell us that Sasquatch sightings are common throughout the USA and that they are generally peaceful creatures unless provoked. And you better believe this bad boy is feeling PRETTY provoked by our little cast of characters. Then you throw in the requisite stoner who, for the purposes of this movie’s found footage style, has a barrage of GoPro cameras which he mounts on everything so we can see what is going on even out in the wilderness. I do like that Exists totally eschews any real attempt at explaining what we are seeing as “found footage” and just kind of adopts that handheld, run and gun shooting style sans explicit explanation. It feels like here in 2014, with found footage godfather Eduardo Sanchez at the helm, maybe we are ready to confidently move past trite explanations for why the stoner guy is still filming and just let the style be a style. Even if that style isn’t your thing.
But, with that said. You would kind of also hope that Eduardo Sanchez dipping back into the storytelling method that he helped create after so many years would result in a total re-imagining of what the style can do. And Exists isn’t that. It is confident and effective at what it is doing, but it doesn’t reinvent anything and suffers from a set up that we’ve been there and done so many times that it can’t be above reproach.
So sure, check out Exists. But don’t mess with the Sasquatch.
And I’m Out.
PS: This movie is a situation where you could have a drinking game based around how many time somebody calls another person “bro”. Take that with whatever weight it necessitates for you.