Director: Jamaal Burden
Year: 2020
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Bigfoot/Sasquatch
Plot:
Heading off into the wilderness, a research team looking for the previous team sent to find a mystical flower used for various potential medicinal cures, but when they find evidence a homicidal killer bigfoot is in the area hunting them one-by-one they try to stop it to leave the area alive.
Review:
For the most part, this one wasn’t all too bad. Among the better features is the rather straightforward and to-the-point storyline that offers up some enjoyable aspects. Starting off without having to go through the time-wasting sources of team-gathering and location-traveling instead this one immediately gets the crew together discovering the source of the previous missions’ failures and the strange manner of what happened to them that needs to be investigated. Given the overall brevity of the film and the immediacy of them being dropped into the situation in this manner, this shortcut manages to inject some ingenuity into this one by cutting to the chase of the mission as soon as possible.
The other fun aspect here is the creature action and effects work. Words cannot express how gratifying and satisfying a practical Bigfoot on-screen is, and the design is effective and realistic for the environment, making good use of partial reveals or shadowy glimpses in the distance. That provides plenty of great encounters here, from the ambush on the escaping team-members in the clearing, a superb stalking amongst a grove of trees or a chase through a snow-covered section of the woods while the victim continually fires back. That there’s a nice show of encounters in the second half that provide plenty of action and brutal practical gore effects, from limbs ripped off, a head smashed, flesh bitten out and much more. These here are what hold this one up.
This one does have some minor flaws. One of the main factors here is the somewhat rambling and scattershot first half that seems to jump around somewhat to the various members of the team in a random manner. There’s never a sense of where anyone is or what they’re doing when they encounter the creature as they spend most of the time rambling around the woos when it shows up unexpectedly which can be disorienting or losing track of time when it’s impossible to have any time and space differential to their activities. This sense of randomness also accounts for the line dropped explaining the creatures’ existence as a by-product in a throwaway line that might be missed altogether.
As well, there’s also the wholly underwhelming and completely expected final half twist that doesn’t need to be there. This setup is completely telegraphed from the very second the characters’ backstory is revealed that will eventually be the one to turn, and to do so with any kind of lame and underwhelming reasoning that is expected to carry what happens here gives this a lot to be turned off. It doesn’t strike as any kind of surprise and just serves as an excuse to set up the final confrontation that could’ve happened in another way that didn’t resort to an easily-telegraphed plot-twist that doesn’t serve as a plot-twist in that regard. These here are what hold the film back the most.
Overview: ***/5
A genuinely enjoyable creature feature, there’s not too much wrong here as the film’s few flaws aren’t that damaging compared to it’s more engaging positive points. This is highly recommended to creature feature fans or those who appreciate this style of genre effort, while those who aren’t as being on the style or enjoy these efforts should heed caution.
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