So much average

Pretty Good

best movie i've ever seen.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

This movie came as a suggestion on this very website while I was reading the page of another movie (you know, the usual "users who watched this movie also liked..."), and I'm really glad I yielded to the curiosity of reading what it was all about. I liked some "found footage" films in the past, but I'm not crazy about the genre, still I was triggered by the scarce plot given here, and I just decided to watch it. Now I'm just through it, and I'm still in shock. The first scene is a police label marking the footage we are about to see as found on a murder scene, so there is little to spoil about the plot. The impending doom of those we are about to meet is made clear from the beginning, only leaving in doubt about who is/are the victim/s and who is/are the murderer/s. Then it all begins...This film could be split in three parts, all of which last about half an hour. It takes some patience to get through the first one, as most of what we see is some obnoxious family games and shallow chit-chat, which serves the purpose of building the context and getting to know the characters. So, we soon come to learn that we're dealing with a somewhat clumsy, but warm and caring father, seemingly a good house man all in all, but with the hint of a shadow looming over him (which will be developed later in the film), a tender, over-sensitive daughter kind of confused with herself, a mother who appears to be steadfast in her familiar role, but a little too stiff and bitchy, and an obnoxious son who is in his teens, but mostly behaves like a second grader or so to the rest of his family and in his leisure time. That is, a believable portrait of every day reality in your neighborhood: a perfect surface with its natural, human flaws. Oh, woe is me, will it not last...In the second part, the secret shadow looming over the father begins to disclose, and we start witnessing his descent into weirdness first, and madness consequently. The dis-functionalities of the family, up to that moment quite dull and ordinary, quickly swirl down into a pit of ever growing frenzy, leading to the final showdown, which unravels in the third part.I won't spoil anything about what goes on, but I'll just let you all know that this is not a horror movie, this is a dramatically realistic depiction of a well too known REAL horror. The performances of the four main actors are stunning, the bond that grows between you and the characters is solid, real, you can feel it, touch it. As the story started developing, I found myself despising the boy, pitying the father, caring for the daughter, getting angry at the mother, and then having all these feelings just messed up and turned inside out as the events unraveled. But nonetheless, there was not a single moment when I was not feeling something for all of them. And I think this is one of the greatest achievements a movie can reach.So, be prepared: you will be introduced to four people that you will get emotionally in touch with, only to be overwhelmed by the shocking doom that they will face. On a final note: I stood astonished in front of my TV while the whole of the end credits silently rolled out and left an empty, black screen which lasted almost one minute, with no sound whatsoever. I just couldn't move away or stop the play. This is the level of the emotional grip this film has cast onto me. You have been warned.

Exhibit A is another found footage film, but this time it decides to portray a terrifying drama rather than a horror. Judith has just received a video camera from her father, who accidentally broke her camera. She becomes a voyeur of everyday life involving her painfully lovey dovey family. With a promotion on the cards for her father, the family seem to be on the up and up. As the film progresses we see sudden changes in the father who seems to be hiding something from his wife and kids. Exhibit A is a fantastic film, and really thrusts you into the life of this family. As the tension mounts a number of key scenes give off all the emotional strain, terror, and awkwardness you would expect as an observer. In one moment we see the father and two children playfully try and capture a goof for You've Been Framed, as the son continuously fails to make the stunt looks realistic, the fun playful game soon infuriates the dad and when his anger explodes it's a truly horrifying moment. The film is a success because it seems so real. You hear about similar stories unfortunately often in the press. The final scene just shows how dedicated these actors are. Maintaining such a draining performance for such an extended take is to be highly commended. Not an enjoyable nor easy watch, but a very involving and affecting one.

...that presents the tragic disintegration of a middle-class family through the lens of a daughter's camcorder, with an excruciating heartbreak of a resolution that reminded this viewer of a certain disturbing scene from "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer." The acting from an ensemble of unknowns is near pitch perfect, particularly the beleaguered father, the "found footage" cinematography is handled well, and the script is tight without feeling stagy. "Exhibit A" efficiently builds a slowly rising sense of dread and horror in a very mundane setting with seemingly mundane characters. Nicely done, and definitely recommended to fans of unsettling psychodrama.

Several films have worked with the conceit that they are constructed of 'found footage', most notably Cannibal Holocaust and its bloodless cousin The Blair Witch Project but few have done so as convincingly or to such strong effect as this second feature from British director Dom Rotheroe.Exhibit A uses as its title card a police evidence marker which lets us know that the tape we are about to watch is from a murder scene and that its origin is 'daughter's camcorder'. This is an excellent touch - playing into Hitchcock's first rule of suspense; let the audience know more than the characters. That one card gives the entire film a sense of foreboding, which it would otherwise lack.The film is shot entirely on a commercial camcorder, operated mostly by the actors and the look is completely authentic, there's little here to suggest that what you are watching was filmed for consumption; it's scrappily shot, the camera often moves erratically and few shots seem at all composed, all of which only adds to the air of authenticity.Rotheroe deliberately cast the film with unknowns and he's really lucked out with his cast, especially the heart-breakingly talented Brittany Ashworth (Judith King). What impresses most though is how naturally the family interacts and how, in the early part of the film, they seem like every family; like yours or mine. The intricacies of family dynamics often play out in the background of shots; subtly building the reality of the situation so that when things get more extreme it's deeply affecting.Violence in cinema often passes me by now. I can count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times that it's really shaken me up. Exhibit A is one of those times. I'm spoiling nothing by saying that the film culminates in the murder that leads to that title card. It's a 12-minute sequence, shot in a single static take and it is the single most harrowing thing I've seen since the rape scene in Gaspar Noe's Irreversible. It's not that the violence is explicit, quite the opposite, it all takes place off screen but that it is so extended, so brutally intense and so very personal.At a time when most films that see the inside of a cinema will slip from the memory almost as you rise from your seat Exhibit A is a welcome shock. It's an intense and difficult experience but it is one you won't forget in a hurry and one that will provoke debate and discussion among audiences, that would be worth applauding even if it didn't also happen to be one of 2007's very best films.