Valley of the Sasquatch (2015) Reviews

• It's Not Bigfoot!

  doorsscorpywag2017-01-09

  Father and son lose everything and go to live in a cabin in the woods. They invite some Mexican night watchman and another kid and go on a hunting trip. Unknown to them the woods are filled with a family of very small Bigfoot who proceed to hide behind trees and make hooting noises. The four hunters are quite stupid as they run around like idiots sometimes off on their own instead of staying together as sensible people would. Eventually they end up at the mine the Mexican was supposed to look after and can't find the bloke the Mexican hired as a replacement so he could go on the trip. In an earlier scene the Mexican bloke starts firing and explained he saw something furry and 3 foot taller than he was which we have to imagine as we see nothing bigger than a squirrel. The same dude never bothers to mention that after running off like an idiot earlier he fell down a slope and found himself surrounded by human flesh hanging from the trees. Something I would have considered worth sharing with my companions. So now we know where the watchman went. Anyway these little Bigfoot kidnap dad leaving the Mexican to go mental and kill his mate while another guy from the firsts scene turns up and tells his tale of being kidnapped and anally probed by Bigfoot. I may have become confused with another film for that last scene but by this time I was so bored I was making sh#t up myself. Then dad reappears and all hell breaks loose for the final couple of scenes as Bigfoot attacks the cabin although seems to have trouble smashing through really thin doors and walls. The Bigfoot scenes were pretty awful as some small bloke in a monkey suit tried to portray the awesome power of an 8 foot evolutionary throwback. But never looked anything other than a small bloke in a monkey suit. The cheesy grin Bigfoot had made the scenes even more ridiculous. Be warned Bigfoot on the movie poster does not appear. Anyway terrible film with some absolutely awful acting. I think the bloke in the monkey suits wrote the script as it seemed to be something written by chimps. No drama, no suspense just 4 idiots in the woods and some men in monkey suits. By the way my review title comes from the last line of a much better Bigfoot tale Lost Coast Tapes which is worth watching.

• Apart from the sasquatch, surprisingly good!

  johannes2000-12018-05-16

  It's easy to push aside this whole project as yet another creature-feature with the umpteenth attempt to revive the (in my humble opinion) most unrealistic and pathetic monster of all: Sasquatch (or Bigfoot or whatever local legend like to call him). And to be sure: all the scenes where we see the creature (in fact there's a whole pack of them) stumble around and fight and roar, this movie is as cheesy as you can expect. It beats me why nowadays (this movie dates from 2015), with so much more technique at your disposal for special effects and CGI, they still dare to come up with guys in furry ape-suits! But surprisingly enough there's another side to this movie. It's about a father and son who, forced by financial reasons, come to live in a shabby shed-like cabin in the middle of the woods. They evidently have mutual issues, the son being weary of his fathers unemployment and his tendency to drink (there's some innuendo that this drinking had something to do with the car-accident that caused the death of the mother-figure) and of the fact that he is forced to live in some dilapidated hovel and not being able to go to college. And the father is weary of his sons passive, complaining and accusing attitude. Then an odd couple appears: an old school-buddy of the father who turns out as an obnoxious drinking and pot-smoking bully, and the boys uncle who is the opposite and acts kindly and understanding to the boy. The four of them leave for a hunting-hike in the woods, which at last (we're some 30 to 45 minutes into the movie by that time!) triggers the Sasquatch-assault. It's like looking at two totally different movies somehow put together. The one where we follow the father and son is actually very good and compelling, supported by some great photography, by a good script and strong dialogues and by very convincing acting of both the father and son characters. I was especially impressed by young Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, who seems like a real promise to me for the future. Even during the attack of the sasquatches on the cabin, where one preposterous scene after another drags the movie down to level zero or beyond, the excellent acting of Joris-Peyrafitte all the time shines through. And while the direction of all the sasquatch-turmoil seemed almost amateurish, the direction of the scenes within the cabin, where father and son are time and again being surprised by yet another assault (stones flying through the windows, a sasquatch falling through the ceiling) is actually very good, the jump-scares that it gave me were almost as genuine as the ones both actors pretended to have (almost as if the director for a more realistic effect didn't warn the actors that rocks would be thrown through the windows!). The ending of the movie illustrated the dual character very well: on the one side the son making a gesture of peace in stead of using his rifle to kill the beast, which makes for an almost moving moment; on the other side the last one standing sasquatch looking as preposterously silly as during the rest of the movie. Well, a silly creature-feature was all I expected (I admit, such movies are my guilty pleasure), so this two-sided movie didn't exactly gave what they promised on the cover of this DVD. But in the end it gave so much more and while watching I was really kind of sorry when at last the sasquatches turned up. I see on IMDb that director (and writer and producer) John Portanova seems to do mostly horror-movies. Maybe he should try a serious drama for once, I bet that would turn out very fine (if not better!) then the horrors.

• I Loved The Connections With The Ape Canyon Incident Of 1924

  sddavis632018-03-12

  You have to make sure that you have appropriate expectations if you sit down to watch this. Seriously - it's a movie about Bigfoot! It's not going to win any Academy Awards. It's not even trying to win any Academy Awards. So you don't come in to this looking for a great movie that's destined to become a classic. You come into this hoping to find a kind of cheesy, low budget, B-Movie at best. And if you come into this with that expectation, you can sit back and enjoy it - because that's basically what you get. It is low budget, it is cheesy and it features basically an entirely unknown cast whose performances are less than outstanding. It features an unfortunate stereotype of the sole Mexican character as a druggie, and it inexplicably includes a flirting scene at the start of the move as young Michael flirts with a girl in town. She gets credited in spite of the fact that she's on screen for probably less than a minute and is given absolutely no lines. She smiles and waves at Michael. That's it. The actress is named Jordan Neslund, it's apparently the only film she's ever been in and for the rest of her life she can rent this and show it to her friends as proof that she was once in a movie. Good for her. The movie accomplished at least that. Otherwise the story revolves around four guys (a father-son, their brother/uncle, and the aforementioned Mexican Sergio) who find themselves staying at a run down cabin in the woods and then go on a camping trip to hunt. And, of course, they encounter Sasquatch - several actually, and not a particularly friendly bunch! There were things I liked about this. Aside from the lifelong memory for Jordan Neslund, even though the performances were unspectacular, I liked the characters. The four guys were all very different from one another, which set up a lot of believable tension between them. That helped move things along. And somebody somewhere had done some actual Sasquatch research. I love Sasquatch stories (don't believe in the big hairy guy, but love the stories) and I appreciated the relationship between this movie and the "Ape Canyon incident" of 1924, when several miners in a cabin reportedly were attacked by several "ape-men." Actually, that story was even told around the campfire as a way to scare Sergio after he had the first encounter with "something" that nobody else believed was a Sasquatch. I would say that this was probably very loosely based on the stories of that incident - and to be honest, I'd really prefer if somebody actually made a serious movie about that incident - whether attributing it to "ape-men" or to local youths (which is the prevailing theory.) That could actually be a decent movie. As for this one - just sit back, set your expectations accordingly, and watch this. It's not going to be the best movie you've ever seen. But it's not a bad way to pass some free time. (5/10)

• Based on actual stories

  celtic4512018-07-31

  I thought this movie was great. Yes, it has moments where the acting and logic had some flaws, but if you can ignore those few occurrences, then this is a great movie. I thought the bigfoots were realistic and believable, and I was on the edge of my seat most of the time. One part of the movie was based on the actual testimony of a man that said he was kidnapped by several bigfoots and he offered them chewing tobacco and he said one of them just ate the entire can - and they had that incident exactly as testified in the move - which I thought was great. It's the best bigfoot movie I've ever seen. Ignore the haters and watch it!

• Into the Woods, I think Not!

  TGGeeks2015-09-16

  This film was the last to be screened at Horrible Imaginings Film Festival in San Diego where it won the award for Best Cinematography in a Feature Film. Monster movie by a local San Diego filmmaking team, this could be classified as a "B" monster movie with Bigfoot as the monster. The movie takes its time in developing its cast of characters and the circumstances which brings them to the setting where the monster mayhem is to take place. The cinematography is nice in making good use of the woods in the state of Washington, and the setting in the woods makes use of its own claustrophobia when out in the woods, especially at night. Scenes taking place in the cabin were oddly reminiscent of the original Night Of The Living Dead with the confined space that our humans have to deal with. The gore factor does increase after a time which creates uneasy laughs in the audience. Bigfoot itself looks rather poor at times, but since Bigfoot arguably doesn't exist (although the filmmaker would argue) we must accept what the movie presents. The tension is fun and the final confrontations with the family of Bigfoot is a good payoff for a monster movie of this type. If there is a downside to this movie is that the film's most likable character is the first to die. What breaks with cliché is how it happens. Other than that this is a fun late night/midnight monster flick.