VS.

For the triumphant return of Bigfoot, I was a bit torn as to what I should talk about. I’ve seen two Bigfoot movies and I suppose I could separate them into two separate reviews but…I don’t want to. I don’t want to subject any of us to more Bigfoot than is absolutely required so we’ll just tackle them both at once.

Not Off To A Phenomenal Start

Now, looking at those titles you might be thinking, “Wow, those both sound like they’re going to be pretty bad.” And you’d be somewhat correct in that assessment, neither film is great, but there are a lot of subtle differences between the two films that I am going to explore. Both are Bigfoot movies (kind of?) and both are amateur productions, but the way that these two films approach filmmaking is from the opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to understanding how filmmaking works. One of these movies basically understands what they’re supposed to be doing but doesn’t completely have the technical knowledge to execute that plan, while the other has no idea what it is trying to be. Let’s start by talking about Bigfoot: The Curse of Blood Mountain!

The Curse Of Blood Mountain! Also, Bigfoot Is There.

Bigfoot: The Curse of Blood Mountain is about two friends, Rigger and Decker, who work together at a bike shop. Decker wants to enjoy some time in the wilderness, so he and Rigger drive up to the local forest preserve to take a hike. Unbeknownst to Decker, Rigger hired a down on his luck local to guide them to where Bigfoot is rumored to be so Rigger can film it. This subterfuge sets off a conflict between the two that follows them to a party they go to later, but it’s not the only thing that followed them out of the woods… Okay, sounds like a solid premise. At the very least it has an easily identifiable set of characters, a plot that makes sense, and a logical story structure. To compare, I will attempt to explain the plot of Brutal Bigfoot.

My Attempt To Explain Brutal Bigfoot.

Brutal Bigfoot is about a group of Bigfoot hunters who, in response to a woman going missing in the woods, decide to see if they can track down information on an experimental laboratory located inside a now-defunct nuclear power plant. So they have to track down Moonshine Bill, who might have worked in the lab, but then they talk to a guy in a pizzeria about his experience with a government coverup of mutated seventy-pound raccoons and this scene goes on for EIGHT MINUTES. Then they wander around the woods for a while, try to get into the plant, and wind up in a low-speed car chase. Then they wander around the woods a bit more and we get a non-ending. That may have sounded disjointed and confusing. That is because it IS disjointed and confusing. There is no solid plot structure here, no characters that we become familiar with, things just start happening and we don’t really know why they’re happening or even care to see what happens.

To Be Fair, Curse Of Blood Mountain Is Needlessly Blurry.

And just to be clear, this is not a case of me comparing two movies with vastly different technical competence. There are just as many mistakes and missteps in Curse of Blood Mountain as there are in Brutal Bigfoot, the difference is that in Curse of Blood Mountain I could generally understand where these mistakes came from and what they were trying to accomplish. For example, one big mistake in Curse of Blood Mountain is that anytime a trademarked image or product came up, it was blurred out, which led to shots where a majority of the frame was blurred out. This is kind of a common misunderstanding in low budget movies, they were trying to protect themselves from legal harm, but there is actually no need to blur out product names as long as the products are shown in the average context they would be, for example, someone could drink a coke, and it is not made to appear that these products are endorsing the movie. They also may have been just being really careful to try and avoid lawsuits, which is understandable.

Ignorance Vs. Mind Breaking Logic Problems

That issue though is not like the problems in Brutal Bigfoot, which start with the title and proceed through every aspect of the film. Let’s pick one to start with that really bothered me, the cinematography. Brutal Bigfoot is surprise surprise, a found footage movie, the shooting style of choice for extremely low budget features. This isn’t an immediate death knell for the film though, as I like many found footage movies, but it gets very tricky to make a found footage film that is visually interesting. Brutal Bigfoot gets around this by sometimes being a found footage movie and sometimes NOT being a found footage movie. What I mean by that is that most shots are the traditional POV of the camera guy found footage style but occasionally we see shots done in a traditional cinematic style that could not possibly have been taken by the camera guy and we never get any explanation of how these shots exist, even though the movie tells us in the opening that everything we are seeing is real! It is a blatant example of wanting to have your cake and eat it too that completely disregards viewer immersion. Seeing these shots is so jarring!

Nitpicks, or Legit Grievances? You Decide!

I did mention the title being an issue, so I’ll explain that now. Brutal Bigfoot is listed as the title on digital services, but the full title of the movie is Brutal Bigfoot Encounters Mutations and Mutilations. It seems like the title should be Brutal Bigfoot Encounters: Mutations and Mutilations, especially because Mutations and Mutilations is in smaller script under Brutal Bigfoot Encounters, but there is no: in the title so you just have to read it all as one sentence. This is the most minor of issues though because every part of this movie is all mangled as the title.

Weird Does Not Mean Bad.

Let’s talk about the story! I’ve already gone over how Brutal Bigfoot’s story is a dumpster fire but I wanted to make something clear, I don’t dislike the story because it’s weird or not what I expected, but rather because they took a story about body horror, government cover-ups, brutal bigfoot attacks, and then just showed me three guys walking through the woods and expected me to be scared. I was pretty kind to Curse of Blood Mountain earlier so time for me to revoke that good will and say that it too does not have an amazing story, what with it having a kind of generic, “people disturb nature and then nature disturbs them” narrative, but the way it told that story made sense. We spent time with the people involved, we knew what the stakes were and we actually saw an okay Bigfoot monster. Unlike in Brutal Bigfoot, where you don’t, spoiler alert!

Did They Think Brutal Bigfoot Was A Documentary?

When comparing these movies though, the bottom line is that Bigfoot: The Curse Of Blood Mountain has potential, and I can see the director coming into his own and making quality films, while Brutal Bigfoot just confuses the hell out of me. Brutal Bigfoot seems more like a PR piece than a film, considering that their own branding is all over the place and it feels so into its own mythology that they would rather just flat out explain to you what the story is than show it to you. And even then it feels less like they’re trying to make a movie than it does that they actually believe all this stuff about government cover-ups, Bigfoot attacks, and Moonshine swilling hillbillies and someone just happened to film one of their rants.

Tags: BigfootHorror movieMovie Review