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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 432203" data-attributes="member: 23">Some very questionable viewing choices from me over the last couple of evenings.First up was... Evil Things (2011) <img src="https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/PXAAAeSwd7looiWd/s-l500.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 522px" />For some time into this film I repeatedly considered aborting. Only a sense of the perverse stopped me from doing so.To get this over with: comparisons with The Blair Witch Project are unavoidable. It's all here: the "found footage" premise of young adults disappearing and never being heard of until this footage was found; the nausea-inducing shaky camerawork; the forced "naturalism"; annoying narcissists all talking/shouting over one another; getting lost in the woods (one young woman even wears a Heather-style beanie).In this sense it seems rather belated. Was anyone even still filming this way - poor quality tape from an enormous camera with a light - by 2011?  It's kind of all been done, and considering they go out of their way to establish how "real" everyone is, it's a little odd that nobody even draws comparison with what's happening to them and what happened in The Blair Witch Project. It's also a huge contrivance that this time there's no real reason for documenting everything other than for the presence of one of the annoying friends who insists on it for no other reason than he wants to (my idea of hell is having a "friend" who doesn't recognise personal boundaries enough to stop filming. I'd have booted them out of the car before this even began).Where this film  differs, though is in its other elements. Also stolen, granted, but used well enough here. The Duel-style escalating road-rage is where the film hooked me. It's introduced. Then it's gone and everyone breathes a collective sigh of relief, but you just know it's going to come back. Again and again. The fact that it's a mystery person against a group of young people, and that they take things off the road and into more personal territory also reminded me of 2001's Joy Ride (or Road Kill as it was in Britain).Something this film does well is establish a sense of isolation. We journey with these friends to their remote accommodation, a large house loaned to them by the aunt of one of the girls as they celebrate the girl's 21st. As we get closer, the roads get narrower until they're off the beaten track entirely. It's established there is practically no mobile service. It's also snowing heavily and the roads icy. They're really away from it all. This adds the "cabin in the woods" element which I'm sure is a decent enough horror premise by itself.When the games begin, it's an effective enough premise.There is some contrivance. Nobody seems to consider, for example, that there are five of them and perhaps only one or two antagonists. And when stuff starts going down,  everyone starts behaving like sorority girls in a slasher, screaming and running about in blind panic. I cut them a break on these fronts because we don't know for certain how many people are stalking them and they are, after all, fairly immature adults who still have enlarged teen-drama genes so of course they're going to milk a crisis for all they can get.There are some moments that are genuinely chilling because they're tangible and even relatable. Many people have experienced or witnessed road rage, how easily it can escalate into something more threatening when occupants of one or both vehicles takes something personally and the red mist descends. Likewise, most of us have experienced being somewhere remote that we don't know well, and may have considered "what if" when it comes to needing help. And I would think most people have also felt a sense of unease at times when the lights are on indoors and it's dark outside, so someone can see in far more easily than the occupants can see out. This is very well done here.Something that only occurred to me afterwards was the extent to which the antagonist had turned the tables when it came to the filming. There are even fragments of clues in this department in amongst the found footage. Moments when I'd found myself noticing they'd filmed X and Y at the same time and put it down to lazy editing paid off with some chills as the story unfolded.Pleasingly, this film also doesn't answer questions about motivation for the antagonist, and we don't ever see them, even though we sense that they are, on the surface, very ordinary. All of which makes them very scary.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?