The Woodsmen is a Kickstarter-funded Bigfoot short film set in Slender Valley where several people have gone missing in the forest. Released in 2018 by Vantage Point Media House and Five Year Plan, The Woodsmen is better than a lot of the feature-length Bigfoot films that I’ve watched because the actual Sasquatch gets more screen time than other movies with runtimes four to five times longer.
I wish more Bigfoot movies were short films, especially if the budget is not there for top-notch makeup effects. I don’t like watching a 90-minute feature and only seeing Bigfoot for less than a minute. Makers of The Woodsmen invested enough of its budget into creating a decent Bigfoot suit and then delivered an old-school creature feature in 20 minutes. It seems like an effective formula to me.
Anyway, The Woodsmen begins on day seven of a search for the latest missing hiker. Leading the search are Park Ranger Sherman and Deputy Ranger Lewis. Sherman is an awkward nerd who has the top job because his father is the sheriff. Lewis is his female second-in-command who’s bitter about the nepotism.
The Woodsmen spends most of the search with a young couple who stumble across the camp of an intense Bigfoot conspiracy hunter. Unfortunately, Bigfoot finds the camp, too, and the last five minutes of the film are packed with Sasquatch aplenty. Once the action starts, it never lets up and ends with a twist and a brief epilogue that signals a potential sequel.
One of the directors, Victor Cooper, is the man inside the Bigfoot suit. Designed by Yoshi Aoki and created by The Butcher Shop FX Studio, the Bigfoot suit looks like its design is based on a gorilla. The creature is menacing enough thanks to the angry intensity in its eyes, sharp teeth, and sharper claws.
For a super low-budget independent film, The Woodsmen is a solid collaborative effort from Victor Cooper, Jodi Cooper, and Rob Howsam boosted by the pulsating musical score of Felipe Téllez. The Woodsmen has nearly 500,000 views via Five Year Plan on YouTube, where you can watch it for free.
NEXT UP: Chapter 51: Boggy Creek: The Series. I review the 2019 Bigfoot horror series.
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It sounds like The Woodsmen does a lot with so little. I think the Bigfoot suit is pretty good!
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