Rating: C-
Dir: Esthevão Cabral
Star: Emanuel Risaint, Cláudia Barbot, Betto Marque, André Nepomuceno
a.k.a. The Evil Path
There’s a case to be made that the found footage horror movie was born in South America, with Cannibal Holocaust. If so, then this Brazillian entry would represent a return home of sorts. However, like most in the subgenre, the biggest debt here is to The Blair Witch Project, which even gets explicitly referenced at one point. The problem is, there’s nowhere near sufficient in the way of innovation to sustain interest, especially for someone like me. I’d put Blair Witch very high up his list of over-rated horror films, and have very limited patience for the slew of imitators who think running about woods with a camcorder is movie-making gold.
This isn’t as bad as many I’ve seen though, since it is not entirely forest-based. It does begin in that light, with a group of five friends heading for a secluded beach which one of them, Betto (Marque – all the characters in this section share their actor’s names), has heard about. It’s all recorded by Esthevão (director Cabral), for upload to YouTube. On the way, they pay a brief visit to a creepy, deserted water-park (top) where they are driven off by a homeless guy, but that’s of no real relevance. It may only be included to get the running time up to feature length, since it’s still under 71 minutes, including the credits. It’s when they enter the jungle, seeking to reach the coast, that things go wrong, as they push past signs saying “Go away” and “Turn back now.”
Naturally, they do neither of those, and their subsequent disappearance brings us to the second part of the film. The operators of the ‘Mysteries Channel’ on YouTube, host Bill (Nepomuceno) and cameraman Rick, received a copy of Esthevão’s tape from Kevin Williamson (I’m going to presume this is a Scream reference), and interview friends and family of the missing party. This eventually includes Williamson, and rather than asking the obvious question – how did he get the tape? – they agree to go into the jungle with him. No prizes for guessing what happens, and the relentless predictability of the movie is its main problem. The opening caption flat out tells us something bad is going to happen. Viewers are then left to sit around and wait for it.
It would perhaps have worked better had the entire first half been excised, and we had started with the investigation, without needing to sit through 35 minutes of jungle walking and inoffensive banter. This could then have played up the uncertainty, with some relatives convinced the disappearance was a prank for online clout. There are folkloric elements too, in particular an entity called the Caipora, a defender of the forest against hunters who don’t play by its rules. I’d not have minded hearing more about that, and less generic found footage-isms. They failed to impress me at the time of Blair, and have certainly not improved with age.