I like Bigfoot and I cannot lie. (Sorry Sir.) As I may have mentioned before. Ever since I was a kid I’ve enjoyed the big, hairy gentleman in most of his incarnations, from Bigfoot and Wildboy to Harry and the Hendersons. I’ve got a half-formed idea to watch as many bigfoot movies as I can (which means I’ve unfortunately got Bill Rebane’s Bigfoot Terror somewhere in my future), but most of what I’ve seen so far are from the 1970s (Harry being the exception). These offerings tend to be low budget affairs, with The Legend of Boggy Creek starting things off in 1972 in threadbare fashion and proceeding through Shriek of the Mutilated and The Legend of Bigfoot without much of an increase in production value.
What I’m saying is, if you’re a fan of Bigfoot movies, it’s best to keep your expectations in check.
So, given a set of standards that leads to me admitting that my favorite bigfoot movie is actually Sasquatch, The Legend of Bigfoot – absolutely NOT to be confused with the earlier, and much more boring, Legend – did Exists and Willow Creek manage to clear that low hurdle? The short answer is, yes, they’re both much better than your average hairy man-beast flick. Are they good movies, however? That may depend on your tolerance for found footage films. And bigfoot.
This is actually my second time watching both of these films back to back. I have a huge list of other Bigfoot films to watch (thanks to David Coleman’s The Bigfoot Filmography), but the urge to see some Sasquatch cinema (and the algorithm on Tubi) caught me at just the right time.
Medium
I watched both Willow Creek and Exists on Tubi, and the streaming quality was much better than the last time I watched them. There’s a US Blu-ray release of Willow Creek (from MPI) that can usually be had for cheap, but there’s no Region A Blu-ray release of Exists. Both can be found on DVD.
Willow Creek is available streaming for free (with ads) on Vudu, Kanopy, Plex, Freevee and Tubi as well as for subs on Amazon, Peacock and Screambox. It can be rented or purchased on Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango and Microsoft.
Exists is available streaming for free (with ads) on Vudu, PlutoTV, Plex, Freevee and Tubi as well as for subs on Amazon and Fubo. It can be rented or purchased on Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango and Microsoft.
Willow Creek
As much as I like Bigfoot, I haven’t dug into the lore very deeply. Most of what I know comes from an episode or two of In Search Of and a few pop culture books like those in the old Time Life Mysteries of the Unknown series. This is despite having Loren Coleman, founder and Director of the Cryptozoology Museum, as a professor in college. Luckily that’s given me just enough information to know the basic references in Willow Creek, including the eponymous town. Willow Creek is, you see, the Bigfoot capital of the world and the first town Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin went to after shooting their famous film.
Ah, but now I’m starting to sound a little like Jim (Bryce Johnson), one of the main characters in Willow Creek. Jim is a huge Bigfoot fan and has somehow convinced his girlfriend, Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) to accompany him on the trip of a lifetime – he wants to find the exact spot Patterson and Gimlin shot their film. He’d also like to shoot his own footage of a real Sasquatch and maybe become a little internet famous in the process.
The vast majority of this film is basically a travelogue, punctuated occasionally with Jim’s dudebro attempts at making a documentary. It’s not bad actually, and Bobcat Goldthwait (yes, that Bobcat Goldthwait) actually manages to make these scenes work, leavening standard couple conversations with interviews with (many actual) locals.
We get to know Jim, the slightly self-absorbed enthusiast, and Kelly, the staunch disbeliever. “People believe in leprechauns” is her stance, much to Jim’s consternation. They’re fun, they’re flawed, they’re perhaps a little oblivious – as when they both notice a missing persons poster and proceed to talk about how they want their own photos to look if they’re ever on a missing poster.
A lot of your enjoyment of this film is going to hang on whether you become invested in these two. They’re not perfect and they’re not completely awful either. Jim’s a major bro, but he really does love Kelly (and Bigfoot) and his earnestness goes a long way towards alleviating the casual overblown male ego thing he has going on. Kelly doesn’t get as much to do, but she’s our voice of reason, the one casually puncturing all the slightly ridiculous pronouncements about how important all of this Bigfoot stuff is.
The time invested early on works for me, even if it feels a little like watching someone’s home movies.
One casting misstep is in the use of a recognizable character actor (Peter Jason) in one of the interviews. Found footage movies always trade in verisimilitude, and seeing a familiar face reminds us that it’s just a movie. He’s really good in his scene, but it’s just a touch too good to be believable (unlike the incredibly long and awkward rendition of a Bigfoot song you won’t soon forget, though you may want to).
Once Jim and Kelly enter the woods, however, things get serious fast. A confrontational local sets the tone and even Jim’s obvious pleasure at finally being near his goal can’t quite staunch Kelly’s nervousness – though to be clear, that’s all about the odds of meeting a bear or mountain lion (or more locals) than it is about Bigfoot.
The first night in their tent in the woods is either the decision of a genius or a madman. There’s a single-camera setup that runs for an astonishing 19 minutes. It starts with an uncomfortable scene of relationship drama and builds to an agony of suspense using primarily distant noises (and the occasional motion of the tent wall). I started out being slightly bored and ended up at the edge of my seat, straining – along with Jim and Kelly – to pick out the knocking, the whoops and the horrible, terrifying sound of something in the grass close to the tent.
Everything after that scene is a bit of a letdown, if I’m completely honest. It’s still tense and scary and there’s a darker ending than I expected, but nothing comes close to that night in the tent.
The Bottom Line
Willow Creek is a slow burn in the extreme, but it’s got one of the best ‘attack’ sequences ever in a Bigfoot film and it’s managed entirely without a glimpse of the monster. It’s just Jim, Kelly and us in a tent. And whatever waits outside.
Exists
A group of young people hit something on the way to their uncle’s cabin, deep in the East Texas wilds. (Uncle Bob, it turns out. No relation.) Though they only find blood and tufts of fur, there’s something out there in the dark. Something that soon begins to stalk them. Though most of them don’t believe it, one of their number knows what’s happening, and they’re all about to find out that Bigfoot Exists.
Exists is directed by Edúardo Sanchez, who you might recognize as having directed Lovely Molly and Altered. Oh, and there’s that first movie he did – what was it? Oh yeah, The Blair Witch Project. (And if you want to feel old – it’s been nearly 25 years since Blair Witch came out. Horror indeed.) If there’s anyone who knows how to do a found-footage horror movie, it’s Sanchez. To his credit, he manages to nail the most important aspect of found-footage, the feeling of immediacy – that what you’re watching is really happening.
Unfortunately, what’s happening is that we’re watching the most stereotypical setup for a horror film ever – a group of young, horny coeds head off to an isolated cabin in the woods. I’ll give the film this – at least there’s no self-referential meta-awareness of the situation. Nobody talks about who’s going to die first or how the cabin is straight out of Evil Dead. It’s played straight, which is almost refreshing at this point, but it’s still so familiar that it breeds contempt. This goes double for our protagonists, two couples and the requisite fifth wheel/weirdo/camera operator. They’re little more than cardboard cutouts – though the actors do a game job with what they’re given. It’s too bad the script is so bare that they’re given almost nothing to work with. It’s all traditional enough to be an example of exactly what kind of film Cabin in the Woods was making fun of.
The camera is generally held in the hands of the aforementioned fifth wheel, Brian (Chris Osborn), the closest thing to a fully realized character in the film. He’s an inveterate YouTuber, GoPro camera enthusiast, and closet bigfoot believer. Though the others are at the cabin for some sun, swimming and ‘extreme’ sports footage for Brian’s YouTube channel, Brian secretly hopes to find evidence of bigfoot. Especially after hearing strange noises in the woods at night. That he’s invested in filming everything is fine, but as with so many found footage movies the rationale wears thin once things start going horribly wrong. Cameras get left in a lot of convenient locations and Brian keeps filming things long after any normal human being would have stopped.
So, yes, Exists is not a great film. However, it’s also pretty enjoyable. Once you realize that Sanchez has no interest in reinventing the wheel, you can enjoy it for what it is – a fairly competent creature feature. Nothing is going to surprise you – not even the well telegraphed jump scares – but the shots are well set up, the acting is fine and the creature effects are really quite good – one of the better representations of Bigfoot on film, really. You don’t necessarily get invested enough in the characters to care whether they live or die – and definitely not enough to buy into the overly-sentimental ending – but how they die is certainly entertaining. And there are moments – the assaults on the cabin by the monster are appropriately terrifying, and some of the monster reveals – including a moment with a man on a bicycle in the middle of the woods – provide a pleasant chill.
The Bottom Line
With a movie title like this one it’s tempting to end on a snarky note – “this movie barely Exists” or something like that – but I can’t be that dismissive. In the end, I came away feeling that I liked the film more than it deserved, but like it I did. Despite the boilerplate plot and the paint-by-numbers characters, it’s well made, and the monster design is excellent.
The Bottom Bottom Line
I actually like Willow Creek and Exists, both as found footage films and as sasquatch cinema. They may not be exceptional (though that tent scene in Willow Creek might qualify), but they’re entertaining and that’s more than I’ve come to expect from either found footage or Bigfoot movies.
