Directed by Zach Lamplugh
Written by Zach Lamplugh and Brian Emond
Starring Brian Emond, Jenna Kanell, Virginia Kirby, and Zach Lamplugh
Running time: 1 hour and 24 minutes
In theaters and on demand May 7

by Roderick Towers, Contributor

I recently bought a book called The Bigfoot Filmography and it is awesome. It covers everything from classics like The Legend of Boggy Creek to flicks that look like they were shot in a day like Bigfoot’s WIld Weekend. Next to Amityville, Bigfoot seems to be the paranormal subject of choice for a lot of low budget filmmakers. No matter the pedigree, if your movie concerns the big guy in any shape or form, you are almost guaranteed an entry into the Bigfoot Filmography, which means if they ever do an updated edition, 15 Things You Didn’t Know About BIgfoot (#1 Will Blow Your Mind) will most certainly get a mention even though it’s a Bigfoot flick best left lost in the woods.

This movie seems to be targeted at two groups: people that are tired of the Internet and people that are into Bigfoot. Can you guess which group I fall under? I’ll say this right off the bat, this movie is not for me. I’ll let you in on a secret. I’m an old man now. I still buy CDs. I reserve DVDs from the library. Is this a melanoma or a growth? Should I have this looked at? I say all this because a movie that takes a swing at internet culture like this is just going to whiff if I’m watching. Look, I only go to three places on the Internet. MovieJawn, ebay, and Dinosaur Dracula. That’s it. I don’t have time for celebrity gossip and listicles. For me, the Internet peaked the minute I downloaded the “Simpsons Doom” patch for Doom II. BIgfoot on the other hand...Bigfoot is my shit. There’s a reason I go to the Southeast Texas Bigfoot conference every year. I love it. Buncha folks getting together to just talk about Bigfoot? Yes, please. I believe the correct term is “Yum, yum, gimme some”. The Bigfoot portion of this movie I’m all for, the other, not so much.

The story concerns a young reporter for Compound, an Internet news site, who is tired of all the fluff assignments he has to cover which range from microbreweries to tiny housing. (I’m guessing this is a riff on Vice News, based on the font they used. I’m confused though. I thought Vice News was one of the good ones. Hold on, let me check with my editors. Hey guys, is Vice News one of the good ones? <This week? I think so. - ed> Well, there we have it.) Feeling that the work is beneath him, he has his sights on becoming a legitimate news anchor. There’s just one glitch, his latest assignment has him stuck square in squatch country, covering an internet famous Bigfoot hunter. Along with his cameraman, they go out in the woods and hilarity ensues, but not really.

The problem here is that, while the movie is winking at smug Millennial hipster culture, our main character is in fact a smug Millennial hipster and we’re stuck with him for the entire feature. The recent movie Save Yourselves! dealt with similar themes but was able to pull off the balancing act by making its characters likable as well. Like I said before, this stuff just isn’t my jam. Most of the humor seems to be fairly on the nose. Jokes about listicles and Soundcloud rappers are pretty low hanging fruit. I’m sad to say that the movie doesn’t work for me in the Bigfoot department either. They don’t even get the squatch call right! The Bigfoot hunter is played for laughs from the very beginning, a lovable idiot. Here’s the thing, they set up his character as a celebrity in the world of squatchers, so why isn’t he acting like one? As I’ve said before, I’ve been to Bigfoot conferences. If these guys have anything, it’s confidence. It takes confidence to stand on a stage and tell a roomful of people about the one time you smelled a Bigfoot once in the woods. Instead of having our intrepid news team follow a guy who they think is a top notch Bigfoot tracker only to discover too late that the opposite is true, they pretty much telegraph what a loser this guy is from frame one. So we already know from the beginning that things are going to go awry.

I don’t like to come down too hard on any movie, especially an independent flick but (again, I’m going to sound like an old man) it just didn’t live up to its potential. It’s a great idea. A found footage flick by way of a Vice News segment is pretty genius. While this could have been a really interesting twist on the found footage formula, they lean into the comedy a little too much for my tastes.I’m a firm believer in the Abbott and Costello rules for meeting monsters: keep the horror scary and let your leads handle the funny business. When everything is treated as a joke, there’s never any real tension. The few scenes of suspense seem pulled from other (better) Bigfoot movies like Willow Creek. In fact, the entire third act where our crew finds a group of drug runners in the forest, is lifted almost entirely from the movie Ghost Team. In the third act of that movie, a group of ghost hunters discovers, you guessed it, drug runners hiding out in a haunted house. I’m not saying it was intentional, just something that’s been done before.

Also, after watching the excellent HULU series Sasquatch, which details the very real and dangerous world of cannabis farming, seeing this stuff played for laughs just didn’t work for me. I did enjoy the ending (even though I could see it coming) but if the previous 73 minutes had been just as good, then the whole thing would have really packed a wallop. Instead, we’re left with bits and pieces left over from other movies that don’t quite congeal as a whole. We’ve simply seen it all before. However, there was one scene that stuck out. On the way to the airport, our news team runs into the crew for a competing show, a sort of hip hop version of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, except they go to McDonalds to teach you life hacks like adding McNuggets to a Big Mac. It’s ridiculous, over the top, and, unfortunately, all too brief. I thought about it and that’s the host I would have rather seen go into the woods to hunt for bigfoot. Dirty Dolla$ign$ and his entourage with names like Rawdog Nintendo and White Morpheus. A hip hop crew roaming the woods looking for good eats and Sasquatch? Now that I haven’t seen before. It’s too bad that the majority of the movie relies too heavily on what’s come before rather than giving us something new.