Review of Willow Creek (2013) by Tyler R — 17 Jan 2015

Willow Creek the new film from Bobcat Goldthwait is a found footage horror film which is about this dude named Jim who decides he wants to make a documentary about Bigfoot. So he takes his girlfriend Kelly on this filmmaking expedition.

So they get to the Six Rivers National Forest in Northern California where Jim wants to capture footage of the actual site where Bigfoot was spotted. Kelly doesn't believe in Bigfoot but she goes along on the journey for moral support.

She's going to wish she never made that decision. They end up getting lost in the forest and it seems like there is no way out. Then it gets dark and they decide to sleep in their tent and that's when they start hearing strange noises outside the tent.

Alright so this movie is basically Blair Witch Project but with Bobcat Goldthwait's name on it. So this was a huge disappointment for me because the first half of this movie is great when Jim and Kelly are going around interviewing fellow Bigfoot believers are very interesting and sometimes kind of humorous and I was onboard.

But then it feels like Goldthwait insists on them going out into the forest so he can get all Blair Witch Project and it sucks. The sole exception is a 20 minute scene which has the couple inside a tent listening to noises as something begins creeping closer to the tent and it's a very tense and scary 20 minutes but then Goldthwait guides everything to an abrupt conclusion which I would have loved if it were even remotely scary or thought provoking.

But this film as a whole ends up feeling just lazy and worthless. The exceptions are the opening 30 minutes and the 20 minute scene in the tent. Everything else feels so unnecessary. Bobcat Goldthwait has made some great films like World's Greatest Dad or God Bless America and i'm glad to see he's trying to mix things up and not make the same movie but next time out he should actually write a script that doesn't feel like he wrote it while he was sleepwalking.

One good thing about this movie is it's 80 minutes long so it's very short so that means if you doze off for like 30 minutes and you wake up during the scene in the tent you won't feel like you wasted your money.