WILLOW CREEK (2013)

[indianasmith]

Found footage type films are really hit and miss.  Some are brilliant, some are annoying, and some are downright painful.

This one falls into the first category.  I am still shaky after finishing it. Bobcat Goldthwaite has done a remarkable job of
creating an incredibly tense but believable Bigfoot movie.

Kelly is an aspiring actress from LA, Jim is her wannabe fiancé and a Bigfoot fanatic. For years he has dreamed of shooting his own
Bigfoot documentary on the site of the famous Patterson/Gimlin 1967 filmed sighting of Bigfoot.  The site is in a very remote area of
Willow Creek, famed as "Bigfoot Country."  So off our two intrepid adventurers go; the girl a total skeptic and her lover a true believer.
They interview many locals who have seen the great beast or studied it; many of these are real people telling their actual stories.

Then there is the journey into the deep wilderness, ignoring the warning of an angry local who tries to deter them from entering the forest
at all.  The dialogue between Kelly and Jim is absolutely believable; they have the chemistry of a real couple all the way through.  Finally
they pitch their tent about a mile or two from the site, and after a swim in the local river, they bed down for the night.  At first, the noises
turn out to be small, furry woodland creatures.

Then comes the shot that makes the movie.  It consists of a 20 minute, uninterrupted shot of these two huddled together in a tent as the
noises outside get louder, stranger, and closer.  You never SEE anything - but by the time this shot ended, the hair on the back of my neck
was standing up and when my cat ran through the room behind me, I actually jumped! 

The ending, although still creepy, was not as brilliant as that long scene with  man and woman in a tent together facing the fears of the
unknown in the dark woods at night.

The movie is slow paced at first, and I remember thinking, "Is anything ever going to HAPPEN in this film?"
But it did.  And it was awesome. The slow burn WORKS for this movie!

I highly recommend this movie.  Watch it late at night with the lights off, and I dare you NOT to get creeped out at least a little bit.

9/10 

[Javakoala]

I agree with Indy on the sustained scene focused on just the two main actors. You just don't see this in modern film. Everybody is all about fast edits and quick cuts. No sustained shots that allow a scene or environment to develop on their own or in the viewer's mind. Kudos to Bobcat for this.

Kudos for also building up what was one of the best scare attempts in ages. Bobcat included humor, weirdness, pathos and sincerity to pave the path for that extended scene in the tent. The man knows how to build a movie. By the time the two main characters wander into the woods, you have completely bought them as real people and as an honest-to-God couple with the petty snipes but the consistent support and love they have for each other. Hats off to the actors for doing an awesome job, as well.

The single biggest failing of this film is that the guy, if not the woman, seems to be very taken with electronic gadgets to filter life through, from cameras to phones. Yet neither of them utilized a simple GPS app, which would have worked even without a cell phone signal. And, given a simple GPS unit is cheaper than a smartphone AND would have helped them locate the site quicker than guesswork, this fault undermines an otherwise worthwhile film. Inexcusable. And I'm not nitpicking. Even the most unintelligent techo-dweebies I know use GPS because they can't be bothered to pay attention to landmarks in their own flipping hometown.

Other than that, it's a hoot to watch for the risks Bobcat takes with the film, doing things not done in most other films. It's far and away much better than CLOVERFIELD with its utterly moronic ending. I'd give it a 7 out of 10.