Rent Hunting the Legend (2014)

Spoilers follow ... - Hunting the Legend review by NP

This story is quite simply ‘The Blair Witch Project (1999)’ featuring Bigfoot. The similarities go beyond simply ‘found footage’ – we never get to see the monster, but see evidence of its activities hanging from trees. The location is very similar to the woodland featured in Blair Witch and appears to be filmed at the same time of year (lots of crisp sunlight stretching shadows over fallen leaves).

To begin, a deer hunter is killed and taken by a huge animal in the Alabama Woods. Five years later, his son Chris (Chris Copeland), dripping with a lust revenge, determines to travel to the location and track down the animal. (“It’s something I gotta do. I need to do it for myself, so,” says Chris at one point. Why do people end sentences with ‘so?’) Lucky for him the deer his father regularly killed don’t take the deaths of their number so personally.

A handful of his friends insist on accompanying him on this hazardous trip, and soon they are interviewing locals, all of whom have stories about Bigfoot, including the manager of a guitar shop, who knows of a man who lives deep in the woods. The band of hopeful film-makers then attempt to track the man down. He’s not pleased, and doesn’t wish to be filmed, but agrees to talk with them. My favourite bit is when the man says – as he’s being filmed - ‘The camera’s off, right? Make sure it stays that way.’

One gets the impression the cast were invited to improvise as their stay in the forests becomes more fraught. It is well intentioned, this update of a film that is 15 years old, but in all honesty it just isn’t really very well acted, and not frightening. People shouting and arguing over something it becomes clear we are never going to see (apart from a blurred shape behind a tree in photographs) becomes very dull viewing.

[SPOILER] One interesting moment occurs mid-way through the end credits where we see Copeland ringing a bell to attract the local Bigfoots to the dead bodies, explaining how he’s managed to survive his isolated existence in such deadly woodland for so long.