(aka, The Lost Coast Tapes, Bigfoot)
I’m beginning to understand why so many people grumble about found footage films.
There are a lot of them out there. And they tend to have certain, shall we say, family resemblances. I still haven’t watched that many of them — at least not compared to the vast hordes of them on the market — but I’ll admit that it is now more obvious how repetitive they can be, even if most of the ones I’ve seen haven’t been terrible.
Most of them.
And I will say, straight out, that Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes is not one of the terrible ones. It isn’t the most exciting horror film out there, but it achieves a certain level of proficiency and is more successful than most of these films are.
Sean Reynolds, a young documentary filmmaker, thinks he has a great story on his hands.
Carl Drybeck, a rather odd man who lives somewhere deep in the wilderness, claims that he has the corpse of a Sasquatch and he will show it to him for Seventy-Five thousand dollars.
So Sean scrapes together the cash by himself, pays for the equipment and help he will need to make a TV special. After all, he may not believe in Bigfoot and doubts that the corpse is real, but he knows he can make it into a great documentary.
But once they reach their destination, they find things are far stranger than anyone expected. Drybeck makes them wear hoods over their heads so they can’t see where he is taking them, and they find themselves in a tiny cabin in the woods surrounded by electric fences. And, while he’s eager to take their money, he doesn’t have the corpse there, and they won’t get to see it until the next day.
Something attacks during the night and knocks out the fence. They wake up to find Drybeck driving off in the only vehicle.
And it isn’t long before they discover there is no way out…
It’s not a bad story and is well presented, even if it is obvious that they had a fairly minimal budget with the bulk of the action taking place in a single location (with an intro back in the city and a quick visit to a cave). The effects work appears to be mostly practical, offering us only glimpses of what is pursuing Sean and his crew. However, a lot is done with lighting and sound. Which is just fine in a horror film, and quite common in found footage films.
Only the main characters are given much of a buildup — in particular, the first character attacked by the creature barely seems to exist in the story. But that isn’t exactly uncommon either.
And that’s about it. I can’t find much enthusiasm for it, but it was pleasant enough to watch and had a few thrills.
Which, yes, is better than a lot of the found footage films out there.
But it is a fairly good timewaster, if you don’t expect much from it.
Just make sure you have plenty of popcorn…
rivets on the poster 