Review of Willow Creek (2013) by Cory T — 11 Oct 2014

Bobcat Goldthwait is an audacious writer-director who has been consistently underestimated and no one could've concocted that he would upend the found-footage subgenre with 'Willow Creek', a flippant faux-documentary on the Bigfoot mythos.

With a tinge of verisimilitude, novice filmmaker Jim (Bryce Johnson) actually checks and tests the audio levels on his equipment before he begins his series of ungainly interviews with Bluff Creek locals who range from blithe non-believers to devout Sasquatch enthusiasts.

Murals of the fabled creature erecting a house are subject of very funny potshots from Jim and the film is not without a winking sense of humor (ex. They comment that no cell reception is the "beginning of every horror movie").

Although his approach is DIY and minimalist, Goldthwait is quite astute about the unrefined mockumentary format like the line reading flubs and uncooperative raconteurs ala the visiting-center woman who is awfully monosyllabic and vague.

The coup de grace is an unvarnished 20-minute long take with Jim and Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) cowering in fear from the acoustics (wood-knocking, yelps and footsteps) in the surrounding campsite and the effect is eerie and heart-palpitating.

For the most part, Jim and Kelly are extremely affable leads and this causes the audience to feel consternation when they are threatened to vacate the site of the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin reel. Normally horror fans are programmed to believe that daylight is sanctum from nocturnal terror, but Bobcat ramps up the trepidation with hair samples and snarling vocalizations near a ravine.