Willow Creek (2013) Reviews

• A worthwhile slow burn, assuming you can endure the first 40 minutes.

  lnvicta2015-06-17

  Willow Creek is another Blair Witch Project rehash, but don't let that deter you. It's a different approach to minimalist found-footage horror, and it winds up being a truly frightening experience if you can make it past the first half. Not that the first half is poor - it's just a long setup to introduce you to these characters: Jim, the believer, and Kelly, the skeptic, on their hunt for the one and only Bigfoot. It's satirical in a way, watching Jim interview these townsfolk about Bigfoot sightings and you as a viewer knowing how ridiculous it all is, but that is what makes Willow Creek work so well. You're led to believe it's going to be a dumb satire on the Blair Witch Project for the first half of the film, which makes it all the more terrifying when things take a turn for the worse. Rather than having jump scares and disturbing imagery, the scares in Willow Creek come almost entirely from sound. There's even a point where the main character shuts off the camera light so you can't see anything. All you can do is listen to the open wilderness: wood knocking from a distance, leaves crunching, ominous howls, getting closer and closer. It taps into everyone's innate fear of the unknown in the simplest and most effective way. As far as minimalist horror goes, Willow Creek is right up there with Blair Witch, possibly even surpassing it. The only complaint I have aside from the overlong build up (which ends up paying off anyway) is the atrocious rock song that plays during the end credits. It takes the dreadful atmosphere you were experiencing moments before and slams your eardrums with this horrendous upbeat music. It can be a relief for some people, reminding us that it's only a movie, but I found it grating. However, this doesn't take away from the fact that Willow Creek is another reminder that found-footage can work with the right team in front and behind the camera. A perfect midnight horror movie.

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• A Good Bigfoot Movie

  BenWhoLikesMovies2014-09-19

  If you're looking for a good Bigfoot movie this is the only one that comes to mind. Now, I call it good, not great. It has it's fair share of flaws, but being from the same guy who directed God Bless America and World's Greatest Dad I expected a certain level of quality often not shown to horror movies, and almost never to the found footage genre. This movie handles it's scares with tact and maturity, and even has a very tense scene in a tent. I won't delve into detail as I do think this movie is worth watching. It's certainly nothing new, but it takes the good well established staples of horror, arranges them in a pleasant package, and doesn't have anything that really made it a bad movie... ...until the end. Sadly, without revealing too much, the movie has a rather disappointing, confusing, and unsatisfying ending. It doesn't ruin the movie as a whole, but since it's the last thing you see, a bad ending skews the rest of it in a negative light. This movie was made solidly enough to the point where I can definitely recommend it. Willow Creek isn't the best movie in world, or even the best horror movie, but with all the recent schlock like Devil's Due and Paranormal Activity 5 it stands leagues ahead. I want a sequel to this, one that hopefully solves the problems this one had. TLDR Version: Good, not great. Worth a watch despite it's flaws.

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• Yawn...

  jhhbeck2015-10-11

  Awful. A solid hour of useless, bumbling interviews with local townspeople and the male protagonist standing in front of Bigfoot sculptures, none of which adds a single plot device. We get it. This is Bigfoot country. Do we really need to hear the local musician's entire folk song, mistakes and restarts included? Awkward pauses are acceptable for building suspense, but if you're going to make the tent scene last twenty minutes, perhaps we could get a bit more than some growling and something poking the tent? And whomever was responsible for the sound effects has an illustrious career ahead of them in something other than sound editing. The Bigfoot howls sounded like a man trying to sound like a young cow/tornado warning. The encounter with Bigfoot lasts all of two minutes, and the only thing the viewer gets to see is the camera flying around and a fat woman in a loin cloth for a split second. I'm all for ambiguity, but, when you've spent the entire film avoiding plot devices like the plague, ambiguity turns into "Eh, I suppose this ending will suffice. Plus, we don't have enough money in our budget to pay the fat woman for a re-shoot." I think the single most annoying thing about this film is that it received an 86% on RT. Did it release on April 1st, or did all of the critics decide to try a new drug beforehand?

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• Well acted and very organic

  superqd2014-07-24

  I admit that I like found footage films, or, rather, I find that story telling device compelling. Assuming it's done well. To do it well, your film relies heavily on acting first, then editing, then sound They all work well here. Too often, these sorts of films have actors who don't know what to say, or how to say it, as they are expected to improvise and aren't confident how to be "natural". In this film, the actors are brilliantly natural and their chemistry is superb. They are a very believable as a couple and as people. The goal itself is interesting, as I have rarely watched a Bigfoot movie, so I found that part of the film at interesting spin. But really, the slow burn here is what really makes me like this movie. As with other films in which the protagonist is a wannabe filmmaker, there are lots of establishing shots with the local townsfolk to talk up the legend, and to get a sense of what is to come. It's all done pretty realistically, and, again, the actors dialogue/exchanges with each other are especially convincing. Again, this film is very much about the slow burn of tension. This is very much exemplified in a scene near the end that lasts nearly twenty minutes for one continuous shot. And it's not boring. At all. The actors are brilliant in the scene, as is the sound. It's a highly effective scene and you really begin to get into the same dread of what's next as the characters due to the immersive nature of the scene. Overall, I really liked it. I think the director did a great job in choice/direction of actors, and the overall story was not over the top. It's a great example of how found-footage should be done. Though, the film doesn't actually try to tell you it's found footage, it's just that the only point of view is the camera(s) used by the characters. But I'll assume someone found the footage in that fictional universe at some point.

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• Two insecure people hear sounds in their tent for 40 minutes

  JJProdMast2014-06-07

  The entirety of the plot could be boiled down to, "Two insecure people hear sounds in their tent for 40 minutes." The characters are vapid, boring, and lack anything insightful or interesting to say. The interviews with the locals are as exciting as you'd expect "unedited" footage with a bunch of random people discussing Bigfoot to be. When things finally do begin to happen, they don't proceed anywhere. It goes on and on with no point or purpose until all I wanted was for both of them to die, and die slowly. Bobcat's other films showed some promise in some regards, but this was just awful.

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