Exists

Great film! Nothing else to say, and yet I can't help myself.

When I first discovered "Exists", a couple of years ago, my hopes for this film were low to say the least, as it has several factors working against it; First, it is made by Lions Gate which, as we all know too well, is hit-or-miss with their films. Some are great, some are terrible and few are in between. Second, Exists comes to us from the director of The Blair Witch Project, of which I am not a fan. That is one of the movies I regret most having wasted my time to see. Third, I had never heard of it which generally means it was a straight-to-DVD release or it didn't do well at the box office. Fourth, I picked it up at Wal-Mart for about $12, which means either it's been out for a while and I still haven't heard of it, not a good thing, or it's just really bad.

So, I started the film with low expectations, just as a little entertainment for me and the kids. It seemed fairly typical; five young adults with cell phones and cameras and not enough sense to have a firearm, travel deep into the woods where we all know bad things are going to happen to them. They hit something with their car and, of course, stop to check it out which is when they first hear the strange sounds. They travel on to the cabin and we get a little peek into what their weekend is supposed to consist of, typical young adult fun and a bit of debauchery. It's worth noting here that this debauchery is not that bad, all we see is a little side boob and a guy smoking a joint. Now things start to get bad for our freaked out not-so-happy-anymore campers. The intensity of the movie begins to build, it becomes highly suspenseful and very much a scary movie.

I have seen several found footage films including The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, Quarantine, Paranormal Activity, Chronicle, V/H/S, The Last Exorcism, Troll Hunter, and many more. I have seen many bigfoot movies including Abominable and several, if not all of the Boggy Creek movies. As far as the sub genres of found footage and bigfoot movies go, this is a perfect pairing of the two and probably top tier for each, I'd rank it second in found footage and first in bigfoot. I was surprised by how much I actually enjoyed this movie. I would definitely recommend it to any fans of the two horror sub genres and to most fans of the horror genre in general.