Exhibit A

Plot synopsis:
Judith King (known as "Angel" by her father) lives with her brother (Joe), dad (Andy) and mom (Sheila) in the UK. Judith has been given a video camera to replace another that had gotten broken. At first the family seems incredibly happy, caring and fun-loving. Judith is becoming withdrawn though; she is a lesbian and hasn't come out to her family yet, and she has a crush on Claire, a teenage girl across the street who sunbathes in a bikini. She often spies on Claire and films her from the bedroom window. While at a beach trip to see their new house, Judith tries to convince her dad not to make the family move away, but is unable to tell him about her crush on Claire. She records the situation on her new camera and also reveals that she is an avid photographer. While filming Claire, she gets caught by Andy's businessman friend, Ray, who seems to figure out why Judith is so secretive, however he keeps her secret and says nothing about Claire in front of Judith's parents. Joe soon catches Judith filming Claire too but Judith hides under a table before Claire can catch her.Andy is trying to get a promotion but financial strain and pressure from the family begin to push him further from reality. He begins smoking (Judith films him with a night vision filter), having mood swings and even builds a swimming pool much to Sheila's annoyance. She tells him he needs to grow up and see reality because they are trying to sell the house, not add to it. Judith becomes terrified when she films Andy coming home with blood on his clothes at night. When Shelia asks him what happened, he reveals that unfortunately Ray was injured and has had half his face torn off. The doctors don't know if Ray will be able to talk again. Shelia feels bad for Ray because in this state he will most likely lose his salesman job, and Judith believes that there's something more sinister going on. It begins to seem likely that Andy is not going to get the promotion or be able to sell the house, and this leaves him more and more mentally unbalanced. Shelia begins to frequently fight and argue with him. One night Judith hides in the garden and Andy tries to grab her; she screams and runs back inside, locking the door behind her in her bedroom. Joe begins to hate Andy and swears at him, belittles him and tells him how much he resents him. This is especially evident when Andy tries to film a video to send to a reality television company in exchange for money and Joe goofs off repeatedly. Judith also finds a garbage bag full of hundreds of used lottery tickets belonging to Andy.When the new pool is built, the Kings hold a pool party during their open house, playing fun music and throwing a barbecue with lots of food. Judith is saddened that Andy did not invite Ray, but Ray finds out about the party anyway and shows up, getting angry and nearly attacking Andy. Ray appears to be going through some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder and half is face is bandaged. Andy escorts him outside, and unknown to him, Judith follows with her video camera. She ends up discovering that Ray thinks Andy was the one who injured him and Ray's speech is slurred from the damage to his face. Andy tells him off but then Ray drives away and mentions that Andy just wanted to try to take his job away, revealing that Andy has been lying to the family about the future of his career and that Ray got the promotion over him. Andy grabs onto Ray's truck but falls over on his face instead. Judith becomes extremely worried about the state of her family. Andy tries to show her video camera to the guests only to discover to his horror that Judith has been filming all of his weird outbursts and behavioral issues.Instead of moving away to their new dream house, the Kings hole up in their old house and Judith earns a new nickname from Andy - "our resident snoop". Appalled, Sheila goes to work and the kids go to school. Andy explores the house and discovers, while filming with the video camera, that Shelia has a dildo locked up in the bedside table and that she favours Joe over Judith as a result of post-partom depression she suffered years ago. He also finds a photo of himself on Joe's dartboard with a dart stuck in it. He finds that Joe has a stash of illegal drugs, and a video of Joe getting a blowjob from Claire - in Andy and Sheila's bedroom. He eventually discovers a secret shrine in a box that Judith has built with photos of Claire in a bikini, realizing that this is why Judith never wanted to move away. On camera, Andy admits that he was the one who hurt Ray to try and get the promotion while Ray was incapacitated.Upon returning home, Shelia, Judith and Joe go to bed but are woken up by a smoke alarm in the house. They discover that Andy, having a mental breakdown, has locked all the doors and windows and has shut off the lights. He then reveals everything he has discovered about the dysfunctional family, including Judith's secret infatuation with Claire. Judith is devastated that her father would betray her trust and privacy, and Shelia and Joe realize that enough is enough - either they have to leave or Andy does. An angry Sheila also blurts out that years ago she was pregnant with Andy's third child, but she secretly aborted it because she feared another depressive episode.The next day, Judith returns home from a visit with Claire to discover that her father is about to commit suicide on camera. Horrified, she hugs him and cries, only to be killed by being crushed to death by Andy when he lies on top of her to choke her. He hits Joe in the head and kills him as well, and Sheila walks in and screams when she discovers Andy piling the children's bodies together. He murders Sheila by repeatedly whacking her head against the floor, and he then tells them he's going to be back with his family soon before shooting himself. It is also revealed that the Kings will be unable to afford their house because Andy didn't get the promotion.

Tags: violence, cruelty, murder, sadist

Review:
One of the better acted "found footage" films.
Since most all FF films are acted out based on an outline and dialogue points to it, you see a LOT of cuts since the actors mess up their "lines." Not here.
Other than the natural cuts from scene to scene, there is very little in-scene cutting, meaning the actors delivered and met their marks.My only problems with the film are that I never really got a sense why the father fell so far from sanity.
Many people have gone through financial struggles without losing their minds, and I never got the sense the father was on edge, mentally, to do what he does at the end.And the ending simply went on too long.
Exhibit A is another found footage film, but this time it decides to portray a terrifying drama rather than a horror.
Exhibit A is a fantastic film, and really thrusts you into the life of this family.
I had never heard of Exhibit A until I stumbled across it on a list which featured the scariest found footage movie moments.
Because I'm a twisted individual, the idea of a family crumbling in front of their own camcorder appealed to me and so I sought it out immediately.I made a point of reading very little about it because it clearly had a shocking ending which I didn't want spoilt.
It's all about a regular nuclear family, probably not dissimilar to yours or someone you know and that's where the disturbing horror really lies.The film has obviously (and probably literally) been made on a shoestring, but it's all the more authentic for it.
It helps that the performances are so good, especially by the Dad who doesn't have an easy role to play at all.
The Mum sometimes felt a little wooden, but towards the end she crucially pulls out a powerful and authentic performance.The trouble with most found footage films is that they don't actually feel like they've been found.
Exhibit A is by far the most 'real' found footage film I've seen.
You buy into the story and actually begin to feel like you know the characters, thus you care about what happens to them.Exhibit A is about a man slowly cracking under financial pressures.
I also liked how we got to uncover lots of little things about Judith, the daughter who does the majority of the filming.
In the end it becomes a film about secrets and how every family has them.
There's a great moment mid-way through where the film starts to take an uneasy turn into psychological horror.
What begins as the Dad trying to humorously stage a video for You've Been Framed becomes a desperate act of anger, verging on insanity.It's a very slow film to get going, with a lot of unnecessary scenes which slow the film down, however this does add to the authenticity of it all.
It's the final half hour where things take a disturbing turn and it becomes gripping to watch.
It has imagery that will sear its way into your brain and stay there for a long time.Exhibit A is a great no budget horror film.
It may be a little slow to begin, but it's well worth sticking with as you feel immersed in the life of this family.
It's a remarkable little film which deserves way more attention than it has received..
The timely story of a normal family disintegrating under financial pressure, eventually driven to the unimaginable.
We witness the terrifying events unfold through daughter Judith's video camera, which subsequently becomes Exhibit A.This film is a slow burning nightmare about real life financial struggles that anyone can relate to.
Not many found-footage films are executed in such a realistic fashion as Exhibit A, the drama was raw, the deteriorating family at the center of the story could be the family next door, or even worse yours!
The film is an extremely upsetting watch that I will never want to watch again, making it kind of hard to recommend something of such depressing magnitude.
The film though stands as a testament that you don't need a large budget, well-known actors or an A-list director to create a movie that has such a powerful impact.The performances were remarkable and were all too real, the actors made everything seem like a horrifying reality.
Bradley Cole gives one of the most gripping, startling downward spiral of a family man since Jack Nicholson's performance from The Shining, absolutely bone chilling!
Bradley plays Andy King, a seemingly normal husband and father of two who is a secret lie, which digs him and his family into the darkest side of human nature.
Judith basically documents every moment of the family's day-to-day life, as a result she discovers the dad's damaging secret and his disturbing change in behavior.
Lastly, Oliver Lee who plays Joe King, the jokester son who begins to butt heads with his father and starts to truly hate him.
He was kind of the comic relief of the film and you relate to his character as he can be you or someone you know, making the last moments all the more horrific and lingering.Writer, Director, Dom Rotheroe has created a timely, ripped from the headlines, distressing story that happens to be a found-footage horror.
He connects with the audience, grabs their souls and throws them in the heart stopping realism of financial woes, which takes a normal father in a downward, sinister direction of the most unthinkable.
It was like you weren't even watching a movie, but more like watching evidence at a murder trial, kind of similar to the real life case involving John List of 1971.
The last couple of minutes will traumatize you and will make you sick, a film you won't want to return to but definitely gets it's point across.
Strengthened by compelling performances from its faithful cast, making extremely effective use of its camera to capture all the unfolding drama, and steadily escalating its gradually- building tension over the course of its runtime, Exhibit A is an excellent example of smart, gripping storytelling that also goes down as possibly the most underrated work of its genre.Set in Yorkshire, Exhibit A follows the day-to-day activities of a normal family that is driven to the unimaginable due to the pressure of their current financial situation.
We witness the whole set of events through daughter Judith's video camera, which are set in motion when her dad hides a secret from the family which ultimately leads to devastating consequences.Co-written & directed by Dom Rotheroe, Exhibit A is crafted with thorough understanding of what it needs to be and the way each segment combines with the next to make road for the chilling finale is truly admirable.
Another key aspect that this indie horror ends up nailing is something that most of its counterparts tend to skip over, and that's the attention provided to its characters.The scripted characters are pretty much like your neighbours next door.
The cast portraying them makes them all the more believable, with Brittany Ashworth & Bradley Cole impressing the most in their respective roles of Judith & her father.
Where the former brilliantly exhibits the sensibilities of a worried daughter, the latter steals the show with his skillful rendition of a father undergoing a complete mental breakdown, which is unnerving to watch at times.On an overall scale, Exhibit A is a first-rate example of escalating horror that implements its found-footage style in a riveting manner and is absolutely deserving of a broader audience.
An edge-of-the-seat thriller capturing the disintegration of a normal family brought upon by financial pressures, Exhibit A is one of the best offerings of its genre that amplifies its tense ambiance amazingly well to culminate with a final segment that's just as heartbreaking as it is utterly disturbing.
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.
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.
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.
Then I was overwhelmed and just sad because this is the same sad story that seems to be in the news daily.The movie was very well written and does accurate display the destruction of one man and his family.
It's "found footage" and it could be your neighbor or relative,which adds to the horror of it.While I do recommend this be forewarned especially if you have ever experienced a tragedy like this.
I find it incredibly sad, I can't say that enough, that things like this movie occur every day in real life.
Don't Know What Film Other Reviewers on Here Watched, But This Was Garbage.
The majority must be associated with the film, or have never watched a good movie in their life.
The premise sounded like something a little different in the found footage genre, but alas, it was the same old story just with different characters.
It's like in the second half they completely forgot what was established in the beginning of the picture.
It is probably one of the worst FF films I have ever seen.That being said, the acting in this is superb.
It's unfortunate when talented people are resorted to this, but I guess something has to pay the bills.I would go into more detail in my review, but I just don't feel that the movie is worth it.FYI; Beware of glowing reviews, as they will most likely come from family and friends of the people involved in the making of this film..
This is an excellent film - fantastic acting, directing, and writing.
It does the job of generating ten good horror movies' worth of tension in a 1h25m run time, which I've never seen before.
The content of the camera is the actual film we're watching.A teenage girl gets a video camera as a present from her very jolly dad.
As she starts playing around with her new toy and documenting her life, we begin to get an insight into her family life.
We slowly watch her father unravel as we begin to understand the situation he is in.
We watch him digging himself deeper and deeper into his evolving nightmare (an attempt at a pool is the visual metaphor of his downfall).Very powerful performance from the actor playing the father.
The performances around him help build up a solid film - edgy, inventive and daring.
The visual style of the film (we see everything told from the point of view of the video camera), pays off, especially in the final, very daring scene.This film does not make for easy viewing.
Probably the most underrated film I've stumbled across on IMDb. I can only assume the mediocre rating is a knee-jerk response to the fact that it's 'found footage'..
(or maybe people went into it expecting more of a horror movie?) Far from gimmickry, the medium lends quite a bit of weight to the story.
Not a single unconvincing performance in the bunch, the dad in particular was brilliant.Not sure what the other reviewer meant about the second half...
and like I said, the performances were more than convincing.5 years and only 8 user reviews and 277 ratings?
My heart was thumping like mad during the last 15-20 minutes or so of this movie.
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'.
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).
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'm spoiling nothing by saying that the film culminates in the murder that leads to that title card.
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.
Exhibit A tells the timely story of a normal family disintegrating under financial pressure, eventually driven to the unimaginable.All is not as it seems as the King family go about their day-to-day lives oblivious of the horror to come.
Dad And is nursing a secret that ultimately leads to terrible consequences for them all.We witness these chilling events unfold through daughter Judith's video camera....Very topical even two years on and the thing that makes this all the more unsettling is that this sort of thing (minus the ending) happens on a day to day basis.
In fact it's unbearable toward the end, with only a little light at the end of the tunnel.The performances are outstanding, and this is one of the better 'found footage' films made.It loses a couple of points for the confrontation at the barbecue, but all in all, it's solid, shocking stuff..
I am a fan of found footage movies but this isn't one of them.
I found it to be tedious, so much so that I found the shaky camera thing that is the deal with this movies to be as incredibly irritating as the actors themselves, specifically the father.While I realize that this genre involves the use of hand held cameras in a pseudo documentary style, there is often little rational as to why the actors would feel the need to document what they do.
Why would the daughter and then the father feel the need to document the disintegration of their lives?
Just not at all plausible to me.I guess some like it but again it was a tedious bore for me and like my title says, I saw the end coming much too soon to make the film even remotely interesting..
The film starts off well with a realistic middle-class family setting, and dad trying to keep appearances up at home after not getting a promotion.
The financial stress slowly leads the father to dig a deeper and deeper hole for himself until about midway through the movie, a breaking point is reached.
Just watched this movie and all I have to say is.
How original!If I could make a recommendation I would suggest you watch "Home Movie" 2008 instead!.
...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.