Hooptober... And Then There Were Nine

52nd Kill

Not to be confused with The Legend of Boggy Creek, which I have been doing all month as I have both on my HoopTober list.

So this big hairy monkey man is a lot crankier than the one in Boggy Creek down the Arkansas road (I never knew bigfoot was a specifically Arkansas thing - or is that just a co-incidence with these two films being set there?). To be honest, I preferred the vague non-determinism of that earlier docu-thriller - although the effects were no better than in this one, the monster remained more enigmatic, a little eerier, than this very straightforward incarnation.

In fact, it's all so straightforward, it seems all our intrepid researchers have to do to manage a sighting is to sit still for a while within about ten metres of some forested area, and old Squatch is going to inevitably pay them a visit. One wonders how this thing has remained such a mystery for all these years when it emerges from the woods and fucks with people as much as it does.

Fucks with people, I said. That would be a very different kind of movie. More like Humanoids from the Deep Woods - shit, someone call Roger Corman, quick! This could be the best legasequel since Top Gun: Maverick!

Once again, I digress. So, this thing shows up very easily which I'd be OK with except, firstly, the scenes of it attacking are somehow underwhelming. They're just not that well staged - it's literally a guy in a monkey suit, and we see too much of him running around and waving his arms around and tearing down tents in frustration (why is he so uptight? that's never really explained) and it just looks a bit pissweak.

Secondly, despite the high strike rate of sasquatch encounters, this film barely bothers to take its characters into such situations! Most of this movie is a sort of buddy comedy, a surprisingly heartfelt one, between these two happy-go-lucky University of Chicago researchers who have embarked on this expedition to find evidence of bigfoot, but who seem far more interested in getting lucky with the southern ladies (and eating a burger, weirdly, in the case of one of them). Now, this is probably the most true-to-life part of this script - but unfortunately it means the film is almost entirely preoccupied in following their travails with the local townsfolk and seems to completely forget it's supposed to be a FUCKING BIGFOOT MOVIE for very long stretches. Maybe that explains how perfunctory the actual bigfoot scenes are.

Hey, it's not bad - these two guys and some of the other characters are actually quite likeable, but as a horror movie (which it really is intended to be), it's a little underwhelming. I was more scared for these guys when the belligerent sheriff found them canoodling with his daughters than I was when the bigfoot was running around their camp.

Best Kill (may contain traces of spoiler)

I'm open to being corrected here, but I do believe this is one of those horror films with zero kills? Oh, there is the story told in flashback by the local yokel about how he was orphaned in a car crash caused by, you guessed it, the bigfoot springing out and scaring his family when they sat next to the woods for about two minutes. I guess that counts but all we see is a car running into a tree.