Evidence (2013) is a found footage movie nesting inside the cheesy framework of a standard police mystery drama. Police are trying to solve a mass murder by a possible serial killer welder at an abandoned truck stop so they recover footage from the victims’ various visual recording devices. The majority of Evidence (2013) consists of the police and the viewers watching this footage and trying to figure out what happened and when, and there is added tension because as we watch the footage, we are not sure who is dead and who isn’t. Unfortunately if you are like me and watch too many movies, you may accidentally figure out who did it way too soon and find the whole enterprise a ponderous, overly serious mess.
Olatunde Osunsanmi directed The Fourth Kind, which was so bad that I kind of loved it so I didn’t expect that Evidence (2013) would be good, but I thought that I would enjoy it anyway. Sadly I was wrong. Osunsanmi still likes to begin his films by assuring the audience about how serious and real his fictional premise is. He uses an intertitle of alleged police jargon to describe found footage as the “unblinking eye.” Because I’m familiar with Osunsanmi’s work, without doing any research, I doubted whether detectives actually use that term in real life or whether any found footage within Evidence (2013) could be considered authentic even within the fictional premise of the film.
I then inadvertently figured out who did it because I recognized one actor in the found footage who is actually TV famous though still largely unknown so I realized that person was more important than Evidence (2013) wanted us to initially believe (Law & Order rule). I was slightly thrown off because Harry Lennix, whom I adore and should have never trusted as a character in a tragically cancelled, but excellent series, is also in Evidence (2013). I then remembered how that TV famous person was way too attached to a person with some lame dialogue that in a different context could sound insane, guessed correctly then hated Evidence (2013).
I grade found footage movies on a scale, and Evidence (2013) still fails because it only uses the genre to go for a twist that even M. Night Shylaman on his worst day (The Last Airbender) would think is lame. The police drama aspect is so cheesy and wooden that even CBS would pass on a series featuring these detectives. The best part of Evidence (2013) is the unhinged ranting of the scene chewing Dale Dickey, but in retrospect, even that is another inflated misdirection.
Evidence (2013) is neither good nor enjoyable. Osunsanmi thinks that he is cleverer than he is, but instead undermines his own work with narrative gimmicks and sensational thrills that fizzle on impact. A serial killer with a welding mask and outfit in the desert is not the type of villain that movies are built on.