As much as I love The Blair Witch Project, it has a lot to answer for. While it wasn’t the first found footage movie, with Cannibal Holocaust predating it by nearly two decades, it certainly popularised the subgenre. The huge profits and seeming ease of production sending a thousand (mostly inept) filmmakers into the woods, cheap camera in hand, looking to score a sleeper hit. 15 years later the horror movie marketplace is flooded with found footage movies, some are great ([REC], Paranormal Activity), most are reprehensible, unholy garbage, The Bigfoot Tapes being the possible all time low point in a genre littered liberally with them.
Where to start? How about theft. Every idea, every beat of the movie is lifted pretty much directly from The Blair Witch Project, it’s jaw dropping just how blatant a knock off it is. Lawyers should be contacted.
Next up, the performances, I’m not expecting anything to get Daniel Day Lewis concerned, the horror genre is stuffed with lousy, wooden performances, but I do expect the actors to convince as actual, functioning human beings, something the cast of this movie utterly fail to achieve. Bad is too kind a word, shit-tacular is closer and as generous as I can manage.
Then there’s the script. There might have been one, maybe scribbled on a dirty napkin in faeces, I’m not entirely sure, but every word that comes out of the mouths of the simpletons onscreen made me want to scrub my brain clean of their incessant idiocy.
I’m meant to write about 500 words about The Bigfoot Tapes, I can’t do it, it doesn’t deserve one more second of my time or any of yours, every second of it is either utterly dreadful or deathly, deathly dull, from beginning to pitiful end. Everybody involved deserves a slap at the very least, if not fiery death. Avoid, avoid, avoid.
Director/Writer: Stephon Stewart
Stars: Stephon Stewart, Davee Youngblood, Shy Pilgreen
Runtime: 82 min
Country: USA
Film Rating: 
