Willow Creek Review

No matter how sick and tired you are of any given type of film, that lack of interest typically doesn’t apply when such a film is made by one of your favorite filmmakers. And that’s why I was incredibly excited to hear that comedian Bobcat Goldthwait (World’s Greatest Dad, God Bless America) was working on a found footage film, despite the fact that I strongly feel it’s time for the beaten-to-death sub-genre to crawl back into the woods it came from.

Released into limited theaters and onto VOD outlets, Willow Creek is inspired by the real-life story of Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin, who in 1967 filmed the most iconic and well-known piece of Bigfoot footage the world has ever seen.

In the film, young couple Jim and Kelly travel to the same creek in California where the video was shot, with Jim convinced that he’s going to find what Patterson and Gimlin documented. Kelly, on the other hand, is just along for the ride, supporting her boyfriend but not believing that there’s anything unusual out there in the woods.

Where most found footage films – and most horror films, period – falter is in their lack of interesting characters, which typically make for a boring lead-up to the horror that you just know is right around the corner. In the case of Willow Creek, however, the characters are the strongest suit of the film, with Jim and Kelly both written and played as being highly likable, with an entirely believable dynamic. Perhaps most important of all, it makes complete sense why the two characters never let the camera go, and so the found footage aspect never feels like it’s a crow-barred gimmick.

Before the young lovers make their way into the woods, and encounter anything out of the ordinary, they spend a good portion of the film’s run-time simply documenting the various Bigfoot-heavy tourist attractions they come across, including a Bigfoot-themed motel, a Bigfoot-themed burger joint and, well, anything else Bigfoot-themed you can think of. They chat with the locals and the Bigfoot enthusiasts/experts, consume said Bigfoot burgers – which look delicious, even though I’m a vegetarian – and poke fun at the various artistic depictions of the mythical beast in the area. Though not much is going on, the first half of the film is nevertheless quite entertaining, with Goldthwait’s humorous touch very much felt.

Unfortunately, just as I had feared, even an incredibly talented and original filmmaker like Goldthwait isn’t able to prevent the latter portions of the film from heading into Found Footage 101 territory, as Jim and Kelly find themselves the unwitting stars of Blair Witch Project knock-off #524. In many ways, Willow Creek almost feels beneath Goldthwait, a filmmaker who’s far better than copying the work of others. The comedian’s Bigfoot flick comes off like his most impersonal film to date, a patchwork of other entries in the sub-genre that is frustratingly generic and feels all too familiar.

That said, though Willow Creek is ultimately a generic found footage film, it’s nevertheless a fairly well done generic found footage film, in comparison to most. The highlight of the second half, and the most original aspect of the entire movie, is a nearly 20-minute long scene that was impressively shot in one single take, which is worth the price of admission alone. When night falls, Jim and Kelly find themselves zipped up in their tent with someone, or something, prowling around outside, and the whole ordeal is documented in real-time, making for a highly effective scene with palpable tension.

The whole film is an exercise in the ‘less is more’ approach to filmmaking and the extended tent scene is an absolutely perfect example of why movies are oftentimes a whole lot scarier when things are largely left to our imagination. Goldthwait’s use of unsettling sounds to unnerve us is quite frankly masterful, and the scene will no doubt go down as one of the most memorable of 2014’s horror offerings. Yea, Bobcat is as good at scaring us as he is making us laugh… who knew?!

But again, Goldthwait ultimately plays the film way too safe, and that’s its downfall. It’s not that the movie is bad, and it’s certainly not that the funnyman isn’t capable of delivering thrills and chills. It’s simply a matter of Willow Creek being far too inside the box, as it comes off more like Goldthwait’s first director-for-hire film, rather than one of the deeply personal projects we’ve seen from him in the past. That’s not the case, given he also wrote the film, but it certainly feels that way.

While it’s admittedly a pretty well-executed found footage Bigfoot flick, Willow Creek is at the end of the day a conventional film from a highly unconventional filmmaker, and it’s for that reason that I can’t honestly label it as anything but a disappointment. If you’re not tired of the sub-genre, there’s enjoyment to be found here. But if you’re of the mind that enough is enough and it’s time for a change, you won’t find what you’re looking for in Willow Creek.