Hunting the Legend   Starring: Christopher Copeland, Hannah Wallace and Jeff Causey Distributor: Image Entertainment RRP: £12.99 IMAGE 4012 Certificate: 15 Release Date: 21 July 2014

Five years before, a boy was out deer-hunting with his father in the Alabama woods, when his dad was abruptly and viciously attacked by something large but not quite seen. His body was never found, but the event left behind an awful lot of blood, and his rifle was discovered abandoned on the ground nearby. Now a young adult, Chris Copeland is determined to find out what happened, and give closure to that part of his life. He takes his girlfriend, his best friend and a film and sound man to the nearest populated area and questions the locals about their opinions regarding the existence or otherwise of a Bigfoot creature. It turns out nearly everyone has heard tales; one person even gives them directions to where a man, who lives off the land, has a dwelling in the woods. They find it, but when they hear a commotion outside, the man leaves to investigate, and the group uses this opportunity to make their escape. Over a period of time they become hopelessly lost in the woods. A number of strange noises and physical occurrences leave them at their wits end. But as they seek to find a way out of the woods, something – or several somethings – has their scent...

How many people reading this review have seen The Blair Witch Project? Quite a few, I should imagine. And from those who have, how many were majorly disappointed after all the hype, and thought it was a load of dingoes kidneys (as Douglas Adams would have said)? Oh, that’s all of you, then? When I saw that film at the cinema, I have never heard before or since such a collective audible sigh or moan when it just finished.

Now, I believe it lends significant power to a film when the peril is only hinted at or half-glimpsed. It means that whoever is watching will build the moment up in their imagination to their own personal fear level. As soon as something is seen in its entirety, that power is taken away. And the more it is viewed, the greater problem of diminishing returns there is. So, with this in mind, you would think that a film like Hunting the Legend, and indeed The Blair Witch Project - in which no peril is actually seen at all – would be greatly received on a psychological level. However, if you thought that, you’d be forgetting the reveal. People want a reward for watching films like this where very little actually happens. You have to let them see the monster, even if they are less than satisfied at the look of it. No matter how good the characters might be, no amount of running around and shouting is going to satisfy the intended core audience.

There have been a number of these point of view/reality movies now, with people simply filming themselves walking, talking and camping. They may be looking for a witch, a wendigo, a troll or, in this case, Bigfoot – however, the result is normally the same. Trollhunter showed us the reveal, but then abandoned the story in the middle. This is the central problem with this format of horror: the fact that the characters are filming what the audience sees, so to speak, it means the moment they are all killed-off the story ends (if there ever was one in the first place). Perhaps if they had one survivor who returned with the footage, then we would get to see what actually happened. But then it wouldn’t be a cheap movie-making experience, and that is what I think is the main purpose of this sub-genre.

3

Ty Power