Willow Creek
Willow Creek
“Did you hear the one
about Bigfoot? Not just the video claiming he was real, but the one about the couple
who go hiking in the woods to find Bigfoot?
It doesn’t end well”
The myth and allure behind Bigfoot has galvanized millions
of people for generations. Theories run wild as to where exactly this beast
resides, with the Pacific North-West Coast of America being the most common
hotspot. It was in this part of the world, in 1967, that two men were hiking
through the Northern Calinfornia wilderness. Overseeing the construction of a road
through the mountains, their campsite was sabotaged and destroyed by an unseen assailant.
Then, the host of the area made itself known to the intruders. Standing nine feet
tall, covered in hair and walking like a human, Patterson and Gimlin captured the first footage
of what would be later referred to as Bigfoot. From here on, the obsession with
this mysterious and elusive creature went global, and an Urban Legend was born.
Over the following decades, sightings were recorded in
various parts of America. Either on video, whether as a dark blur moving
through the thick bushes and trees or the woods, or strange sounds not known to
be coming from any other animal, were captured by campers, hikers and passers-by.
Then, other pieces of trace evidence appeared, such as footprints, hairs, and
what appeared to be nests, made of crushed branches and flattened bushes
scattered through the mountains.
So far, no quantifiable proof of Bigfoots existence has ever
been produced, which in the most concrete case would be the remains of the
creature. No bones or corpses have been found, and if this creature does exist,
it is either very timid and stays away from any sign of life, or it’s very
smart and doesn’t want to be found. As the legend of Bigfoot grew over the
years, there have been many interpretations of it’s image through film and
television. Perhaps the only friendly representation of the beast was the 1987 family comedy “Harry and the Henderson’s”. As a family drive home from their
camping trip, they hit a large animal running across the road. The dad gets out
to inspect the road kill with his own eyes, and discovers it’s a Bigfoot. Believing
it’s dead, they take the animal home, where it isn’t dead, wakes up and
proceeds to ransack their house. But it turns out old Harry is gentle and kind,
and becomes a member of the family. The movie was fun, light-hearted and in
many parts, hilarious.
But as horror films are now hotter than ever, the well of ideas
has to be either abandoned or returned to, and in the past ten years alone,
there have been a barrage of movies about Bigfoot, depicting the creature as an
evil being.
The one I chose to review for this series was “Willow Creek”.
Released in 2013, it’s a “Found Footage” style film, that clearly takes a few
of it’s ideas from “The Blair Witch Project”. A young couple, Jim and Kelly,
arrive in the town of Willow Creek, which is the closest point of civilisation to
the site of the original Patterson-Gimlin video of 1967. The guy is a Bigfoot fanatic,
falling in love with the legend as a child, and determined to make his own
video documentary and prove once and for all, Big foot does exist. His girlfriend, ever supportive and happy to go along
for the ride, is more sceptical, but helps her boyfriend make his ambitious
documentary none the less.
The film works in two ways; it’s a intimate and interesting documentary,
interviewing local people of the town and then it turns into a horror film. The
first half, shows the couple moving about town, stopping off at the local diner
for a Bigfoot Burger, then visiting notable sites and taking pictures with the
Bigfoot statues littered across town. Jim has his own bunch of leads, and meets
with a collection of people, some of them believers in the beast, some of them
not. As they journey further down the road, away from town and towards the
wild, the stories and details of each local persons encounter with Bigfoot becomes
darker, and more dangerous. The tension slowly mounds, as you can feel this
couple getting plenty of warnings not to go looking for the monster, but they
continue to do so anyway.
The second act of the film, involves the young adventurous couple
hiking into the section of woods near the riverbed where the original sighting
took place. Jim and Kelly camp for the first night, and slowly but surely, mysterious noises
and rumblings emerge from the dark woods. The film works well in these two regards; acting as an
informative insight on the legend of Bigfoot, in the heart of the area where
the stories originally came from. As it turns into the tale of terror of a
couple who should have heeded the warnings, but find themselves lost in the
woods with something drawing nearer to them, it becomes very tense and suspenseful.
At less than 80 minutes in length, Willow Creek is a relatively
short trip into the Bigfoot lore. It doesn’t give you any definite answers that
the creature exists, but watch right to the end for some kind of reveal I can’t
spoil, but it will give you chills and make you wonder how the Bigfoot, if it does
indeed live, is able to remain hidden. Perhaps he gets a little bit of help?
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