Willow Creek

Comic-turned-director Bobcat Goldthwait spins the Bigfoot myth into a winning found-footage horror that also works as a sly commentary on the urban legend business. Amateur documentarian Bryce Johnson and his supportive if sceptical girlfriend, Alexie Gilmore, head to Willow Creek, California (where the famed 1967 film of the beast was shot) in the hope of capturing Sasquatch on camera. The slow-burning first hour charts the couple's easy-going relationship, the area's tourist phenomenon (Bigfoot burgers anyone?) and interviews with mostly authentic fanatics, before setting up camp in the woods. That's when the tension starts, effectively built up in a bravura 20-minute single take of the couple huddled in their tent as something prowls around outside, getting ever closer. The film is clearly influenced by The Blair Witch Project, but Goldthwait ratchets up the suspense in an eccentric mixture of reality and fiction that consistently engages against all odds.