5.9 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.6 |
Jim and his girlfriend, Kelly, are visiting the infamous region near Willow Creek, home of the original Bigfoot legend, which Jim is keen to explore and capture on camera. Isolated among the dark and silent woods, neither Kelly or Jim is prepared for what they encounter.
Starring: Alexie Gilmore, Bryce Johnson, Peter JasonHorror | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Adventure | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English SDH
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
As former standup comic Bobcat Goldthwait pursues his second career as a filmmaker, he continues experimenting with genres and formats, always leaving his individual stamp so that everything he tries comes out a little (and sometimes a lot) skewed from the mainstream. Willow Creek is Goldthwait's attempt at a "found footage" horror film, and it has the distinction of being made by someone who, at least initially, thought the "found footage" gimmick had been exhausted (a sentiment shared by many moviegoers). Goldthwait credits filmmaker and horror afficionado Joe Lynch (Holliston) with persuading him that there was still room for innovation in the technique. So if your first reaction to Willow Creek is "Not another one!", blame Lynch. Goldthwait's solution to the many artificialities that bothered him in found footage films was to make Willow Creek the product of an amateur documentary filmmaker obsessed with Bigfoot—specifically, with the famous image captured in 1967 by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin in the remote California region of Bluff Creek. Setting out to retrace the footsteps of Patterson-Gimlin, the filmmaker finds that the surrounding region is now a virtual theme park devoted to Bigfoot. It's an intriguing idea, and it has the virtue of being true. The sets and locations already exist. The notion of creating a found footage film from a would-be documentary isn't new. Among other examples, director Ti West used the same technique in The Sacrament. The peculiar spin in Willow Creek is that the "documentary" is an amateur creation made strictly for fun. It may never have been intended for anything except private viewing among friends. No one is more shocked than the amateur Bigfoot buff when he ends up finding far more than even Patterson and Gimlin ever imagined.
Willow Creek is the first feature shot by cinematographer Evan Phelan, using a digital camera of unspecified make and model. True to the "found footage" aesthetic, the camerawork has deliberately been made to look amateurish, but in fact it is far more professional than most amateurs could manage. The focus remains tight, and the framing is precise, so that the image on MPI Media's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray retains the usual benefits of digital capture: a sharp, crisp image; well-rendered detail; mostly solid blacks (with exceptions noted below); and generally good color rendition, although the post-production process has achieved the naturalistic look of a home-made recording shot on the fly without the benefit of professional lighting. Still, the dense growth of the forest is a rich green, and some of the California country landscapes are stunning. The lengthy nighttime sequence in which Kelly and Jim huddle in their tent is an exception to the above, but it is so by design. With just a single light source from the camera to illuminate them, the image is somewhat fuzzy and alive with video noise (if this were film, we'd call it "grainy"). The blackness surrounding them also shifts back and forth among various shades and tones of black in what is sometimes called "crushing" but is in fact the exact opposite. ("Crushed" blacks have no differentiation between levels of black.) Again, all of this is by design and not a fault in the Blu-ray. Because the film is short and the video extras are minor, MPI has delivered an average bitrate of 29.99, which is excellent. Despite the fact that a quarter of the film consists of a single shot with apparently very little movement, the video complexity of that shot requires substantial bandwidth.
If you listen to the wind whipping around the microphone in some of the extras, particularly the deleted scene, it immediately becomes evident how much work went into crafting Willow Creek's 5.1 soundtrack, presented on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA. Clearly, much of the dialogue had to be reconstructed in ADR or, for those participants who were unavailable, heavily filtered to remove background noise. As for the remainder of the track, here again the "found footage" aesthetic limits the degree to which the 5.1 surround field can be used, at least until Kelly and Jim find themselves alone at night in the woods, at which point suspension of disbelief kicks in and the soundtrack comes alive with increasingly frightful effects: footsteps, vocalizations, impacts (I don't want to be more specific) and other sounds that are difficult to characterize. (On the commentary, the participants reveal that Goldthwait supplied several of them.) The film has no music, except for a brief performance by local folk singer Tom Yamarone, who is one of Jim's interviewees, an impromptu ukelele performance by one of the crew and a closing number over the credits that I will leave for the viewer to discover.
There is much to admire in Willow Creek, especially how writer/director Goldthwait has incorporated the existing lore of Bigfoot into the story in a way that not only supports the narrative but lures the characters further into trouble. But Goldthwait may have gone too far with his self-imposed found footage "vow of chastity", especially in the film's second half. The first half itself is already a lengthy buildup, and too many viewers are likely to feel let down by a second half that is, in effect, a different form of buildup, as the now-terrified adventurers cower before the camera. It has become a cliché that modern horror directors rely too much on the shock effect of a sudden edit, but Goldthwait in Willow Creek goes in the opposite direction. He's so afraid of creating an edit that wouldn't exist in "real" found footage that he won't cut when he probably should. The sequence didn't work for me, even with the film's impressive ending as a payoff. You may feel differently. Buyer's choice.
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