Savage (2011)

recommended

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

For a big lad, Big Foot is very adept at killing people whilst keeping himself out of sight. We don't get to see him for a while, and when we do, we are given tantalising shots of silhouettes and various limbs speeding past.At first, the tone of Savage seems to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, with knowing performances from some of the cast. As time goes on, either the tone gets a little darker or I became used to some of the flippant moments. Either way, as the death toll mounts, we are effortlessly invited into darker waters (speaking of which, a solitary eye floating in the river is a moment that provides a perfect mixture of shock and mirth).For a horror film, this isn't going satisfy everyone, although there are some moments of gore and some tension, even if it is difficult to sustain an atmosphere of terror in blazing sunlight. For a low budget project, setting the action amidst forest fires is ambitious (the resultant fires don't look like they need much controlling), but having those fires disturb the habitat of Bigfoot is an interesting plot device.

After a forest fire brings about numerous causalities, a small town finds itself under siege by the same legendary creature they use to attract tourists and must find a way to stop it's rampage before it kills more townspeople.Overall, this was a pretty decent Bigfoot movie that has some good stuff going for it as well as some flaws. One of the better areas in here is the fact that the body count is pretty high, giving us some pretty good gore in the bloody kills, as well as some great use of the local woodland scenery to provide some tension among the stalking scenes as it portrays the creature as using its environment to ambush its prey effectively. Also of note is the fact that it looks pretty decent as well, being a little more humanoid in appearance and not the big, hulking hairy brute so often associated with these movies, and the change is quite nice. On the downside, it does manage to waste a large amount of time on plot-points that go nowhere which tend to just drag this out by going nowhere and the fact that most of the gore is seen as aftermath and the on-screen mangling is hardly seen firsthand. Otherwise, this one is pretty decent.Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

Yet another bad, cheap Bigfoot creature feature, this time Martin Kove is a great white hunter who wants revenge for the monster killing his father when he was a child. Bear Valley National Park is the hunting grounds for this beast, forced out of its home by a fire that is growing worse. Dale Davis is one of those Bigfoot researchers who has devoted his life to finding its whereabouts enlisting the aid of Kove to get a true recording of the creature's existence so that all his scoffing critics would finally be proved wrong. Tony Becker is a forest ranger who is investigating the murder of firemen who seem to have been ripped to shreds by a bear or something. Becker's pregnant wife (Lisa Wilcox, "Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master", wasted in a minor part) waits for him to come home. Meanwhile, Anna Enger and her husband Quint Von Canon are on the lam after a convenience store robbery goes wrong resulting in a murder, hiding out in the forest and certain to come in contact with the Bigfoot themselves; Becker will encounter them, learn about their crimes, and attempt to arrest them. The movie is such a low budget affair that the Bigfoot murders mostly occur off-screen and none of the characters, except maybe Becker (although, Kove is fun as the uncouth and stubborn hunter who will not cooperate with Davis even as the kid pays him for his help), are that particularly interesting. Davis, as the know-it-all with fancy gadgets supposedly hi-tech enough to find Bigfoot, often looks foolish, though he is sincere in his goal to catch an authentic recording as to have evidence to contradict the doubters who chastised him. The villain of the film, besides the violent Bigfoot on the rampage, is a developer with grandiose plans for the area, responsible for starting the fires as to level the park so he could get his plans underway.

In the every burgeoning genre of Bigfoot horror, this goes right to the top, along with Abomination. Admittedly, when this includes stuff like Shriek of the Mutilated it isn't saying much.This was done on a modest budget, according to the director (caught this at a horror film convention) but it looks every bit as good as anything on the Sci Fi channel with the added benefit of good acting and an actual script.One thing i hate in these movie is bad CGI and while I wish they'd gone more for practical effects, the CGI used was pretty good. It's a wise filmmaker who knows to keep things to a minimum.I hope this gets a good release with a push because it's way better than just about any other bigfoot movie out there (other than the aforementioned Abominable, which gets the nod thanks to some effective gore.)