Bobcat Goldthwait crams his hat into the over bloated ring that is the found footage genre with the Bigfoot themed Willow Creek.
The story is very generic of most FF movies: Jim and his girlfriend Kelly are visiting the infamous Willow Creek, the alleged home of the original Bigfoot legend (the tale of huge ape like creatures that roam the forests of North America). It was there, in 1967, the legendary beast was captured on film and has terrified and mystified generations since. The setup is pretty intriguing, however, with all the background information on Bigfoot, the film barely scratches the surface.
The film has a VERY long lead in, which isn’t a bad thing. I’m not one of those action straight away kind of people, but if you make the audience wait for a payoff, the payoff better be well worth the time invested. This is why The Blair Witch Project worked so well. It had a great payoff, but more importantly, the lead in had some very creepy moments. Unfortunately, Willow Creek has a hell of a lot of filler, like interviews with people, which none of them were engaging enough to drag the audience into the film. Oddly enough, there are not one, but two, songs by Bigfoot truthers which can only be described as weird.
The two leads Bryce Johnson (Jim) and Alexie Gilmore (Kelly) make a pretty good fist of this. Th
eir interactions are very natural, just like a couple should be, and that does help in the early stages of setting up the story, but they are not so likable that you are concerned for them when trouble hits (a trait of many a found footage flick). At times, Jim is also a bit of an a-hole. Goldthwait clearly knows the genre, but there is no real tension created until the last 25 mins, 18 of which are spent inside a tent, the camera static with just the noises of the possible Bigfoot(s) outside. While it is effective in creating tension, 18 minutes is a long time when the couple don’t even think of trying to look outside. I understand what was trying to be achieved here, but for me, it didn’t really work (well, not for the entire 18 minutes anyway). When the couple finally make a run for it at dawn, the old clichés come into effect ala The Blair Witch Project and that aforementioned payoff doesn’t really work as well as it should. It’s something you’ve seen in a bunch of other films and you could see it coming from a long way out.
Willow Creek is not a poorly made film, nor is the idea a bad one. In fact, I liked the idea. What let it down was the fact that it offered nothing new to a genre fast running out of ideas. With the legend of Bigfoot, there was a lot of scope to do something different. Sadly, that wasn’t the case.
A big missed opportunity.
