The Horror Show
Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes
by Corey Grant
So, Hulu+ has finally removed commercials from their movies. Don’t quote me on that but it seems like that, at least on the Wii version of Hulu+. It makes movie watching a lot more tolerable. There was nothing worse than watching Jugface with three minutes of commercial breaks every fifteen to twenty minutes. I don’t know how I would have been able to follow Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes with tons of commercials. For many reasons this movie was difficult to actually understand what was actually going on, though it was still an enjoyable ride.
A woodsman, Carl Drybeck, claims that he and his partner have killed a Bigfoot and it becomes a viral sensation. However, they won’t let anyone see the body, until a team of documentarians pay him a hefty sum of money to document their Bigfoot investigation with his help. The team strongly believes that Drybeck is hoaxing the whole thing, and are willing to do anything to prove him to be a fake. However, there are Bigfoots, maybe the plural is Bigfeet, either way those creatures are out there. However, the Bigfoot doesn’t seem like it’s out to hurt anyone. It seem more like they are trying to scare people away, but from what? There is something sinister in the woods of northern California, and it’s out for blood.
This movie, like I said two paragraphs up, was difficult to follow. No secret here but this movie was found footage, that alone isn’t enough to make a movie hard to ascertain what’s happening. A large portion of this movie actually takes place at night, which generally isn’t a problem for found footage because all the cameraman has to do is switch on the night vision. Not for this movie, night vision is used briefly in a single scene. The rest of the movie relies on a crappy flashlight and the camera light. Needless to say, it was nearly impossible to see what was happening. Secondly, the movie follows a series of characters who don’t know what’s happening either. One moment they’re like, “Bigfoot isn’t real.” Then they’re like, “Oh, wait maybe they are!” Then it’s like, “Ah maybe Bigfoot is actually an alien or something, but I don’t really know because this movie is kind of unclear.” There is no character who has enough information to communicate to the viewer what is happening. The movie also decides to throw new information at the viewer too quickly for the viewer to process. Then while the viewer is still dealing with the last twist, the movie decides to throw in an entirely new one.
However, the twists in the story piqued my curiosity. I kept watching, just because I wanted to know what was happening, even though I never got answers. It does its job in gaining the interest of the viewer and keeping their attention. Although I don’t think the delivery quite pays off. It’s like a rollercoaster, you hop on and you’re enjoying the ride but you’re waiting for the final drop. Sadly, the final drop is more like a tiny dip and you get off feeling disappointed.
My desire to learn about what happened outweighed my disappointment. Thus, I decided to do some research, at first I couldn’t dig up any information about the movie, no one had the answers. I came across the movie’s Facebook page, which shed new light on the subject, and discovered that this movie is actually built upon a rich and interesting lore. So before I go any further, this next paragraph contains huge spoilers. So here’s what I’ve learned from Facebook:
In this movie, Bigfoot is indeed real. Also, Drybeck and his partner, after years of hunting, learned how to effectively kill and capture the beasts (leading to the body he successfully retrieved). This act caused the Bigfoots to exhibit aggression towards Drybeck. They aren’t violent though, they are actually benevolent which is why they are just trying to scare away the humans and not kill them. Bigfeet are actually able to travel between parallel dimensions (this world and possibly the spirit world). The reason no evidence for the existence of the creatures has ever turned up before is due to their ability to travel between dimensions. Bigfeet are actually interdimensional guardians that stop creatures known as, “The Others” from entering our world. Since Drybeck was responsible for killing so many Bigfoots, The Others were able to slip into our dimension. The Others were actually responsible for all the characters’ deaths and were seen in the final few seconds of the movie with cloven hooves. As to what The Others are, some people speculate that they are either demons or Wendigos. Now, see all that lore? Doesn’t that actually sound interesting? I wish that the movie had actually made a stronger attempt to include most of that in to the plot. It was alluded to slightly but not enough to understand what was happening while you were watching the movie.
I think the only reason I enjoyed this movie was because the lore was interesting enough to partially satisfy my curiosity. Now, I hear that there is a sequel planned for 2017, currently titled Bigfoot: Beyond the Lost Coast which allegedly promises to delve further into the lore. If this sequel plans on having half of the lore that was revealed and potentially reveal what The Others really are, then we have a movie. I also hope that they show more of the Bigfeet because I felt like I didn’t get enough in the first film. It’s a movie about Bigfoot and we only see little silhouettes occasionally. Supposedly they shot more Bigfoot scenes than what were shown, but filmmakers felt that the movie was better without it. I felt like a little more Bigfoot would have granted a better pay off. Another thing I hope they change is adding slightly more competent characters. Like Kevin, the sound guy, he can’t even keep the boom mic out of the shot. If he’s a sound guy by profession, then that should be second nature to him.
I think Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes was far from perfect, but it’s a promising start to a potentially great franchise, so long as they focus heavily on following through with the lore that they’ve already started building on.
Billy Wayne Martin, HMS
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