EXHIBIT A - Director: Dom Rotheroe

Thanks to the incredible (and I must add well-deserved) success of Paranormal Activity, the horror film market is once again seeing a surge in found-footage, low-budget, pseudo-real horror films.

The bad side of this, obviously, is that there will be so much unremarkable stuff on the market that we will once again get over-saturated very quickly.

On the good side, this will hopefully get distributors finally releasing some of the smaller but absolutely terrific films they've sitting on for ages.

'Exhibit A' is one such film - I had the privilege of watching the film in 2007 at Raindance Independent Film Festival in London and it was simply one of the most effective and brilliant films playing the festival that year.

Since then I've been very excitedly waiting to hear news of a release date to no avail. Which is completely a shame as here is a film which I'd like to inflict on most of my friends, if only to watch their reaction to the story that unfolds on the screen.

Like most of its' counterparts, 'Exhibit A' claims to be real: a tape which was found at the scene of a crime and dubbed 'Exhibit A' by the Yorkshire Police. This much is made clear in the few opening moments by a card on the screen effectively setting the unsettling tone of the film: we don't know what the crime is or what the tape contains.

What follows is an unbelievably harrowing journey into the fate of a family: a normal family disintegrating under financial pressure unfolding through daughter Judith's video camera received at the beginning of the film as a birthday present.

To say any more would be unfair to director Dom Rotheroe who creates an ever-growing sense of menace and unease through very familiar and everyday situations. The characters are believable, especially to a British audience , and this makes the whole experience even harder to watch.

'Exhibit A' is an immensely inventive film, gambling all its' strength on the audience caring what happens to the characters and not resorting to any cheap shock tactics. Even the use of the found-footage is not over-done, the camera becoming a voyeuristic gateway for the audience without ever losing the sense what you're watching is reality.

The performances from the entire cast are terrific but special mention must go to Bradley Cole who as the patriarch of the family desperately trying to keep his life from falling apart is a genius creation: a middle-class man whose breakdown is slow but always believable.

I said it at the beginning and it's worth noting again: 'Exhibit A' is a hard watch. It's frightening and unpleasant in places and the final half of the movie will definitely break some members of the audience. When I attended the screening at Raindance there had already been one evening showing and the usher who let us in told us that there were quite a few walkouts the night before and that one person threw up. Although the story might not be entirely true, it rings true considering the timely subject matter.

So if you're a horror fan who hankers for intelligent and original fare, you owe it to yourself to check out 'Exhibit A' when it hits DVD on the 1st December.

'Exhibit A' comes out in the UK on the 1st December.