This episode of our regularly scheduled program finds us deep in the woods once more with another group of social media investigators hot on the case! All of these found footage movies about influencers in the wild have me wondering if there are just legions of these folks flooding the woodlands in search of…whatever. It’s interesting in that we’ve seen home-brew investigators getting involved in criminal cases, so it’s not unheard of.
Folks love to feel involved.
It seems like there’s a cottage industry waiting to be exploited here, though. We need more “wild guides” to take these folks into the woods and wilder places of the world so they can make their videos and “documentaries.” There’s money to be made, friends! And isn’t that what America is founded on? Making money!
SHADOWS OF BIGFOOT follows a couple that does videos about unsolved mysteries. In their latest video, they are heading deep into the woods to investigate a series of disappearances and to see if they can track down a “hermit” who was accused of murdering his wife. The couple have brought a camera person with them to film their exploits and the trio quickly ignores the warnings of a recent bear attack and head into an area of the woods that was off-limits to track their interview subject. It doesn’t take long for the filmmakers to encounter locals who warn them of a creature in the woods, as well as a mysterious guide who promises to take them to where the hermit is if they pay him. It doesn’t take long for them to find who they are looking for but on finding him, the mystery and danger only deepen as they learn the story of the monster in the woods is all too real.
Oof.
Ya know what, in my heart, with movies like this, I hope they had a blast making the movie. I hope they had fun and just made something that they all liked. That’s my hope. We forget, in watching these movies, that a lot of times, these are friends just making a movie. Some of them want to make money, but many just want to make a movie.
That is my hope.
The movie, well, it’s a movie.
There’s no real plot outside of – social media investigators searching for trouble and finding it. The film is extremely predictable, and the adherence, or lack thereof to the “rules” of found footage is very loose. There are music cues in the background, there are a few shots where “someone” was filming but it doesn’t seem like it was the person we were following, and they play fast and loose with the camera angles.
The acting of the core three is decent. Not forcing big special effects and creature effects when you don’t have the budget is great. They use the heck out of their woods locations, which is smart. Heck, for all I know, they used the same area over and over again. You would scarcely be able to tell.
The brief glimpses of these characters as people aren’t nearly enough, and the other characters are mere sketches. There’s just not much to this movie.
It’s not awful, there’s just nothing to really recommend it.
(PS, nothing of what you see on the movie poster is in the movie – cabin or beast that looks like that).
1.5 out of 5
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 