Exists is a 2014 Found Footage horror film directed by Eduardo Sánchez, co-director of The Blair Witch Project.
The film centers on a group of young college students who go on a summer vacation to an isolated woodland house owned by the uncle of the group's leaders, brothers Brian and Matt. However, on their way there, they accidentally strike an unknown creature. As the group finds themselves under attack, it becomes clear that said creature was a Bigfoot - and now it's out for brutal revenge.
List of tropes applying to this film:
- Ambiguous Gender: The Bigfoot's gender is never stated, nor is its child's, though the fact it has a child at all would seemingly imply the adult is female.
- Ambiguous Situation: The ending. After realizing he and his friends accidentally killed the Bigfoot's child and blaming himself for the subsequent deaths, Brian surrenders to the Bigfoot and decides to let it kill him. However, the Bigfoot instead retreats into the forest and it's left unclear why. Did it forgive him upon seeing his guilt? Did it want to inflict a Cruel Mercy on him? Did it have a Heel Realization? Was it simply too tired and injured from the nonstop fighting to do anymore and gave up?
- Anti-Villain: The Bigfoot is only attacking the group because they accidentally killed its child in a hit-and-run without noticing. Brian loses his will to live upon realizing what they'd done, and tries to let the creature kill him.
- Bald of Authority: Once things start going to shit, the bald Todd is the one who takes over as the leader.
- Big Damn Heroes: Uncle Bob tries to do this, but only succeeds in being the next and last victim.
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Obviously. Depicted as the classic humanoid ape, as well as being very fast and strong. Mention is made of how many sightings perceive Bigfoot as a peaceful, shy creature that doesn't attack unless provoked and prefers to avoid humans, but this obviously doesn't apply to the Bigfoot featured here, due to the accidental death of its young sending it into a violent rage.
- Bittersweet Ending: Very heavy on the bitter side. Everyone except Bryan is dead, but the Bigfoot spares him after seeing he is genuinely repentant. And of course, the Bigfoot's child is still dead, so even its victory is hollow.
- Black Dude Dies First: Subverted. Todd is the second to die, and does so in the middle of the third act.
- Butt-Monkey: Brian is pranked and mocked by pretty much everyone. Ironically, he's also the only one to survive, though one may consider this yet another instance of his suffering.
- Cassandra Truth: Brian and Matt's Uncle Bob had an encounter with a Bigfoot many years prior to the film and was shaken enough by the experience that he refuses to ever return to the old family cabin or let his family go there. Sadly, his nephews don't believe his story and take their friends out to said cabin for a vacation, kicking off the events of the film.
- Closed Circle: Invoked by the Bigfoot, which is intelligent enough to put together that the protagonists came to its territory using a car and thus destroys it after its first (and failed) assault on the cabin, than waits on the trail they came down to ambush them if they try to leave on foot or bike.
- Cruel Mercy: Considering his brother, uncle, and best friends have all been murdered by the beast, Brian is understandably less than pleased when it spares his life for whatever reason.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: Brian and Matt assumed Uncle Bob was crazy for his talk about Bigfoots living in the woods surrounding his property. Turns out they really should have listened.
- Cutting the Knot: The Bigfoot deals with the group holding up inside a small trailer to hide from it through the rather expedient method of pushing the trailer down the hill it's on. The resulting tumble kills Dora and Matt while also creating a hole in the trailer that the Bigfoot can use to enter and pursue Brian.
- Genre Deconstruction: Quite a number of slasher movie tropes and cliches are subverted and deconstructed, with the characters briefly coming off like your typical band of douchebag slasher victims only for the crisis to instead show them as simply normal, kind-hearted people who were simply out having a good time like any person and react with realistic intelligence to their situation, and the monster simply being an animal lashing out over the death of its young.
- Hope Spot: As the third act begins, while Elizabeth is dead, the rest of the group is alive - including Matt, who is revealed to have survived the bike attack - and holed up in a trailer, with Uncle Bob on his way after being contacted via cellphone. They seem to be set to escape. Than the Bigfoot finds them again as they're signaling their location to Bob and everything goes to hell.
- Human Hammer-Throw: Once the Bigfoot gets a hold of Todd, it hefts him up, spins, and hurls him into a nearby log as hard as it can. Given that we're talking about a huge and very strong ape monster, this is predictably fatal for Todd.
- Hysterical Woman: Dora starts edging into this towards the end, though it's very hard to blame her considering the circumstances.
- Immune to Bullets: Averted, as the Bigfoot suffers multiple gunshot wounds over the course of the film and is very clearly hurt by them. Unfortunately for the cast, the Bigfoot is as big as a grizzly bear and about as hard to put down, meaning the dinky, ancient, ill-maintained rifle they find in the cabin is far from enough to kill it quickly. Uncle Bob's hunting shotgun does a much better job, leaving the beast with severe injuries that are likely to be crippling or even fatal, but he doesn't get off enough shots to kill it before it kills him.
- It Can Think: The Bigfoot seems like a mere raging beast at first glance, but it proves to be quite cunning, as well as emotionally intelligent. It's not necessarily at human sapience, but it's clearly a very intelligent animal with strong intuition and problem-solving capabilities like many great apes. It even seems to recognize Brian is genuinely repentant and spares him.
- I Know Mortal Kombat: Todd insists he can handle the rifle on account of having played paintball. Nobody else is very impressed with this, and while he does an okay job with the gun, it's clear he has very little idea of how to handle it beyond pointing and pulling the trigger, resulting in him not using it to its full potential. It doesn't help that the gun in question is of a caliber and make that is woefully inadequate for bringing down an animal as large and strong as the Sasquatch attacking them.
- Monster Is a Mommy: The Bigfoot is after the group because they accidentally killed its child in a hit-and-run without noticing.
- Non-Malicious Monster: Double Subverted. Both the opening text and Brian stater that Bigfoots aren't dangerous unless provoked, but the characters dismiss this in light of the Bigfoot's savagery and violence. It turns out that they really are usually non-violent, but the main characters accidentally ran over this Bigfoot's child and it wants revenge.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Subverted. For the first chunk of the film, they go out of their way to not show much of the Bigfoot and you're left with the impression they won't for this reason. But as the story progresses, we see more and more of the beast, culminating in the climax where we can see it in broad, clear daylight. The Sasquatch manages to be much scarier when seen clearly.
- Not Quite Dead: Matt turns out to have survived his initial run-in with the Bigfoot by playing dead. Unluckily for him, he ends up dying for real very soon after the others find him.
- Pyrrhic Victory: The Bigfoot successfully kills all but one of the people involved in its child's accidental death and leaves the sole survivor a broken man. It accomplishes nothing, since the child is still dead and the targets were just a group of hapless innocents who caused its death entirely by accident and without knowledge. Plus it has been badly wounded hunting them all down. The ending rather gives the impression that the Bigfoot is not pleased with its "victory" and is, at best, just more miserable than ever.
- Reckless Gun Usage: Called out by the girls when Todd finds an old rifle in the cabin to use against their attacker, only to expose his lack of experience with firearms by pointing the barrel right at them as he loads it.
- Super-Persistent Predator: The characters explicitly lampshade how the Bigfoot is freakishly determined in its pursuit of them, given that most wild animals avoid humans instinctively and most sightings of Sasquatch describe it as a shy, receding creature. It turns out to be justified as well, as the group accidentally struck and killed the Bigfoot's young with their car and it's attacking them out of vengeful rage, which is indeed something some animals do.
- Together in Death: At the end, Brian is so far past the Despair Event Horizon that he decides to just let the Bigfoot reunite him with his friends in death. He's very unhappy when it decides to instead spare him.
- Tragic Villain: Bigfoot initially seems to be a mindless beast, but its actually lashing out over the death of its child.
- Vengeance Feels Empty: A possible interpretation of the ending is that seeing Brian's final breakdown makes the Bigfoot realize how senseless and futile its vengeful rampage was and give up.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: While obviously fictional, the movie seems to take some inspiration from the Ape Canyon incident, one of the most famous reported Bigfoot sightings in which a group of gold prospectors claimed to have had a group of Sasquatch lay siege to their cabin.