Willow Creek, or, A Night in the Woods

Since Exists didn’t do it for me 1, I felt like I was owed a good Sasquatch found footage movie. I decided to finally watch Willow Creek, from 2014 directed by Bobcat Goldthwait.

The premise is that an amateur filmmaker named Jim has traveled to Humboldt County to make a documentary about revisiting the site of the Patterson-Gimlin film. (If you were familiar with the most famous Bigfoot recorded sighting, but didn’t know the names of the people who filmed it, don’t worry; you’ll hear them repeated over and over and over again throughout). In town, Jim visits the local Sasquatch-themed tourist traps and interviews a few people who claim to have had encounters with the creature.

He’s traveling with his girlfriend Kelly, who’s agreed to act as his camera person and to hike out with him to the site. Their relationship is starting to show a little bit of strain, because they’re so different: she’s a supportive, reasonable woman aspiring to go further with her acting career, and he’s kind of a jerk.

Actually, that’s not entirely fair. He’s a little thoughtless, but in terms of horror movie boyfriends — much less found footage movie boyfriends — he’s practically a saint. He’s a true believer in Sasquatch, and he says he’s been wanting to make this pilgrimage since he was eight years old. She’s a skeptic, but is supportive of him realizing his dream.

There’s a pretty charming dynamic between them that gradually develops as they go around these small towns, getting B-roll footage and interviews. You can tell that they’re both in the beginning of their careers, but she’s more comfortable with a camera. He’s still awkward and nervous, and the interviews have missed takes and the sense that he’s not the best with people and getting them to open up and feel comfortable. You can tell that this won’t be a particularly good documentary.

The scenes around town take up the first half of the movie, and it seems like they’re not doing much apart from establishing that the people around here are a little off. As “calm before the storm” foreshadowing, it could seem like it goes on too long. But in retrospect, you realize that it’s underscoring how much they’re outsiders, how this is such a big deal to him, how he’s enthusiastic but woefully unprepared, and how she’s there for no other reason than to support him.

The people in interviews seem to be a combination of actors and actual local Sasquatchers, true believers with an odd reverence for Patterson and Gimlin. Really, they seem like the kind of slightly-off people that Bobcat Goldthwait would find fascinating. One of them is played by a recognizable character actor, which is fitting, because it’s the most dramatic story, but also breaks any suspension of disbelief. I don’t think this works like normal found footage movies, though, since it never seems to be relying solely on verisimilitude.

But Willow Creek doesn’t work at all like I’d expected it to. There’s one brilliant choice in particular: to have a single, uninterrupted take that seems to go on for at least twenty minutes. It seems like it’d be impossible to sustain tension for that long, but it just keeps going and going. You’re dying for it to cut, or to do anything to provide some kind of release, and it simply refuses to. It’s so simple and so masterful, and it is one of the scariest scenes of any movie I’ve ever seen.

I can absolutely see Willow Creek being divisive, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear complaints from horror movie fans, found footage movie fans, and Bigfoot movie fans. But it absolutely worked for me. It feels like a small, scrappy little project that does a lot with a little, and it never feels (unintentionally) amateurish. You don’t need to spend a ton on practical effects when you understand the power of creepy noises in the dark, and you have the confidence to just turn the camera on and leave it running while you try to scare the hell out of people.

1
In retrospect, it’s another movie where the title is the review. “What’s the best thing you can say about it?” “Well… it exists.”

1 In retrospect, it’s another movie where the title is the review. “What’s the best thing you can say about it?” “Well… it exists.”