Tahoe Joe

One thing that the horror genre lacks in, is the inclusion of cryptozoology. But not to worry, Tahoe Joe fills that need to a T! Best of all, this is a horror film that even a younger audience can watch, but not to young! This clever mockumentary is a wild ride and full of twists that will have you on the edge of your seat and pointing at the tv screen. The real life chemistry and friendship between the film's creator, Dillon Brown and actor, Michael Rock really shows and helps build a foundation of the fictional versions of themselves that they play. But it is the legendary Sasquatch known as Tahoe Joe that steals the spotlight in this one. The creature is displayed beautifully terrifying and has a unique look made up of unspeakable monster and natural animal. As an avid horror fan and a believer, I definitely recommend checking this one out.

I generally do not write movie reviews. In fact, this is the first review I've posted on IMDB. The obviously biased 10/10s prompted me to leave a real review.

I love found footage movies and was pretty excited to see that Tahoe Joe had good ratings so I decided to give it a shot.

The acting is not great. Most of the actors are obviously acting with poorly executed emotions. The first footage of bigfoot looks like footage of a man wearing a ghillie suit. Not animal like at all. The footage that prompts the filmmakers to go looking for Bigfoot is laughable.

I wish I was watching this with friends so we could riff on it. I recommend that's how you experience this one.

This was such a great movie. It has a tiny (super tiny) budget, but you can tell that Michael and Dillon put a lot of thought and work into it. Lots of tiny details and boxes were checked. Like, if it doesn't make sense to us, then it doesn't make sense to Michael, and he'll pretty much call it out during the movie 😄.

You can really tell that the two main stars enjoy working with each other, and some of the other characters, man...they're fun. Some are odd, but in a good way(if that makes sense).

It's listed as horror, but I'd consider this more of suspense. There are some pretty eerie parts, a coupe scares, and some tension to it for sure, but if your kid watches it(mine did), you won't have to worry about nightmares.

I hope there's a part two!

The Blair Witch Project with Bigfoot was done well for what was put into it. The acting was mostly good and the way it was set up was believable. My favorite parts were the early Bigfoot sightings caught on tape. They did an excellent job making it appear as if there was a creature lurking in the area.

What I didn't love about the movie was, as always with independent films, the length. It's really hard to hold my attention beyond 75 minutes, especially when it's a mockumentary style with almost only handheld footage. I think this film would've been better around 60 minutes just to keep it at typical documentary length.

The actor who played the missing dad wasn't that great, in part because his stuff went on for too long, and the situation of him vlogging and being alone wasn't really great storytelling. Towards the end, when things get chaotic, the acting suffers a little because the characters are not being tense as they probably should be in the situation. I also think they showed too much creature, specifically the teeth. There's a cool homage still frame to Jaws & Texas Chainsaw in the credits that totally worked for me, and would've been enough on its own. Less is more. But overall, a great job. Well done.

I liked the makers' attempt at keeping almost everything meta, but this found-footage film takes a tad too long in its setup, whereas the payoff is pretty minimal. The acting by the kid was pretty terrible, and they didn't do much with the third character Shane. He is presented as a storehouse of information, but the protagonists never question his sources or intentions. Why would he decisively get drunk when he knows the area is dangerous? It's obvious that all the FF horror movies on Tubi only feature scares (if any) in the final 10-15 minutes, and that's the case here too. The creature effects are not bad, but the stakes felt low. Make a part 2 maybe, with these guys (+ additional crew) returning to the forest to prove a point to the world that they weren't staging it. This felt kind of incomplete.