State’s Evidence 2004

Scott Douglas Smith declares his intention to kill himself and shoot it all with his camera, a troubling plan born from despair that he thinks might be worth documenting. At school, he confides in his five closest friends—Brian [Cody McMains], Rick [Drew Tyler Bell], Patrick [Kris Lemche], Trudi [Majandra Delfino], and Sandy [Alexa PenaVega]—who try to calm him down and reassure him that life will get better. Yet the mood quickly darkens as they consider the possibility of turning their pain into something public; they decide to follow through on a shared, dangerous impulse and purchase cameras for everyone, aiming to upload their raw videos to a website and tell their story in real time.

Patrick’s actions grow more disturbing as he reveals a troubling pattern: he had been filming a local bully, Tyrone [Andrew McFarlane], and his girlfriend, an act that ends with Tyrone beating him for the intrusion. This moment foreshadows the dangerous escalation that follows, as Patrick launches a plan to target students who irritate him before taking his own life. He records a video in which he draws up a list of the people he intends to kill, a clip that is eventually found by one of the boys and shown to the group. The discovery provokes a heated reaction: Sandy and Trudi push back, with Trudi warning that Patrick might be losing it, but Patrick insists it’s only a joke—part of a larger claim he makes about his “art” and notoriety.

Sandy responds with blunt honesty, labeling Patrick a murderer, a confrontation that highlights the mounting tension within their circle. Despite the outcry, the group decides not to broadcast the violent contents of that tape, choosing instead to stash it on a camera as what they call “State’s Evidence.” The plan then shifts to a grim routine: they arrange to meet at the school at a single time and fall asleep together, hoping to fade into the background of a silent, shared tragedy. But Patrick and Rick rise before the others, slip into the hall, and Patrick loads his gun, urging Rick to film everything as it unfolds.

What follows is a nightmare of gunfire and fear. Patrick begins shooting students, scanning the hall for Tyrone and his friends, while other students scramble or lie injured in the corridors. Scott races to intervene, finding Patrick harassing Tyrone, who is on his knees and crying, while Rick continues filming the horrifying scene. In a brutal moment, Scott pleads with Patrick to spare Tyrone and take him instead, but Patrick injures Scott and then kills Tyrone in cold blood. Rick shoves the camera away and runs, trying to escape the unfolding carnage.

Patrick seizes the camera and drags the wounded Scott into a science room, where he records a chilling confession: this wasn’t a random act; Patrick intends to force the country to notice the issues of teenage bullying and self-destruction. He declares his aim to provoke national attention, then ends his own life with a gunshot. Scott, in a final, haunting twist, admits that the entire sequence began from sheer boredom and a desire to feel alive, a revelation that reframes the tragedy as a cruel commentary on the ennui of adolescence rather than a chaotic accident. Police arrive to find both boys dead and the camera left running until they switch it off.

The movie closes on a somber note: Scott’s mother sits beside a television, her face swollen with tears as she confronts the unreachable void left by a son’s death and a school’s unspoken loneliness. The story lingers in the viewer’s mind as a stark, unsettling look at how inertia and disenchantment can spiral into violence, leaving families and communities to pick up the shattered pieces long after the final image fades.