After two films with a social message, Bobcat Goldthwait tries his uneasy hands at "found footage".
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| "What's out there, honey?" "Oh, I think its Goldthwait doing his Police Academy bit." |
Bobcat Goldthwait has had a long and varied career. From stand up comic to movie star to director, the man has seen it all. He starred in one of the biggest comedy franchises of the eighties and even had a cameo in the Johnny Depp flick, Blow. Why on earth he chose to make Willow Creek is beyond my comprehension. I don't ever swear in my reviews. But seriously, f*#@ this movie!!!
In this thriving but extremely inexpensive genre of films, it's hard to come by the good ones. After the dark comedies World's Greatest Dad and God Bless America, expectations were high that Goldthwait would put his own unique spin on the trend that started with the Blair Witch Project. Unfortunately, Willow Creek is ten steps back for the director and makes this movie fan question exactly why he chose to make this absolute rip off of the Blair Witch. Everything in Willow Creek has been done before and is a sad representation of how far this style of film making has come in the past ten years.
Other than a few moments of edge of your seat tension, Willow Creek is a messy, uninspired retelling of the aforementioned Blair Witch and tries to play coy by making this a movie about the mysterious Bigfoot instead of a wood dwelling witch. We get attitudinal campers talking to townsfolk. We get the long journey in to the woods. We get the time spent by the river. And most of all, we get a lot of time spent inside a small tent while mysterious sounds happen around our unlucky and highly annoying campers.
Worst of all, we get shaky cam running through the woods at night so we can't make anything out while this viewer feels the urge to spew popcorn and Red Bull all over my home theater floor. Either this is Goldthwait's sad idea of satire or he's given up on being creative because this movie sucks.
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| "Come on sweetie!! It's off to the scary woods so I can behead you!!!" |
The handheld style has been critically blasted time and time again. Willow Creek is the exact reason why. Its the hard opposite of creativity mixed with a low budget in the hopes that sad sacks like myself will buy the blu-ray. Goldthwait should be embarrassed of his lame attempt to plagiarize the slightly better Blair Witch. After his last two releases, it's shocking to see him try and pass this off as anything original. All remaining copies should be fed to Sasquatch. I think he's hungry.
Anyways, back to watching Bigfoot Hunters. Its much better and definitely more entertaining than this pile of Squatch dung.
-CG
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| "Bigfoot sad." |