15 Things You Didn’t Know About Bigfoot (#1 Will Blow Your Mind)
I’ll admit- I kind of regret not seeing this for the 2020 Atlanta Film Festival. I’m glad that I had the opportunity now, however.
Director Zach Lamplugh has come up with an entertaining send-up of everything from paranormal “reality shows” to “The Blair Witch Project” through a simple premise- an investigative journalist whom is assigned to cover the cultural phenomenon surrounding Bigfoot, and gets caught in the middle of a Bigfoot adventure. The catch is, Brian Emond (playing “himself”) is an up-and-coming journalist who seems stuck in neutral after he manages to get a terrific interview with an Atlanta rapper in the middle of a scandal. He thinks he’s going to be propelled to the big time, but instead, he keeps getting puff pieces, and he’s exasperated. After being passed over for a promotion, he gets sent to Northern Georgia to a Bigfoot Festival, and to interview a couple of fairly well known internet personalities who swear to the existence of Bigfoot.
The “mockumentary” form has been so well engrained over the years that it’s almost disarming how successfully Lamplugh and Emond have not just played into it with their screenplay, but the execution. There’s an extra level of meta to “15 Things” that exists because not only does Emond use his name, but Lamplugh plays Brian’s “producer,” and uses his name when we see him. You can’t help put ask, “Is this seriously a news story gone awry?” Of course the answer is no, because this is truthfully too funny to be real- the level of absurdity this movie goes to could not possibly be authentic to life. And then, once Brian and Zach are hooked up with Jed (William Childress, in an honestly hilarious performance), who is said to have gotten the best look at Bigfoot to date, the film’s structure snaps into focus, and we get cliches from several different “lost in the woods” stories (“Blair Witch Project” was just the first to come to mind for me), and twists that the word “unexpected” does not do justice for.
Spoiler Alert: I don’t think you find out 15 things about Bigfoot in this movie. (You probably learn more than you need to know about Jed, however.) I would not expect that information to reflect poorly on the film, though, which is a very funny comedy, whether you want to frame it as a spoof on those “ghost hunter” type shows or the story of a down-on-his-luck reporter who gets fed silly stories, seems to have another one, and gets something he didn’t expect along the way. There is one thing about Bigfoot that this movie does reveal that might surprise you. Well, maybe not; his reaction, however, might take you off guard.
