Review: HUNTING THE LEGEND

Title: HUNTING THE LEGEND

Year: 2014

Director: Justin Steeley

Writer: Justin Steeley

Starring: Christopher Copeland, Hannah Wallace, Jeff Causey, Justin Steeley

In writing this review I have to saying up front that HUNTING THE LEGEND is likely a movie I'll have to re-visit in a few months to judge fairly. I say that because I watched this movie days after seeing WILLOW CREEK. The films are about the same subject matter and delivered in a very similar style. You should never compare one movie to another when reviewing but in this case it was difficult not to with how much these two films had in common. Unfortunately for HUNTING THE LEGEND, WILLOW CREEK is a really good movie.

HUNTING THE LEGEND is a found footage movie that really wants you to believe it's actually found footage. So much that the main cast of actors all play "themselves." I think this is a cool approach and helps you buy into the realism factor a bit.

The story here is that when Chris Copeland is younger he goes hunting with his father. While out in the woods he hears his father scream. Chris runs to check on his father and the only thing he finds is his father's gun, blood and a giant foot print. After years of research, Chris determines that it was bigfoot that killed his father.

Chris decides to seek vengeance for his father so he gets his girlfriend, his best friend and a camera crew and takes them out to the woods. He's going to hunt down bigfoot and make a documentary out of the whole thing. How do you think this is going to turn out?

HUNTING THE LEGEND relies a lot of atmosphere and loud noises in the dark. The idea is to creep you out with what you don't see. The less is more approach. This is the right way to go with an indie film and it does work to some success here. 

The problem is the film never really gets scary. Some of the right ideas are presented but they aren't executed properly. I would have liked to see Justin Steeley take a more confident approach with his filmmaking. Steeley had opportunities to really extend scenes and properly let the tension build but doesn't. This is where seeing WILLOW CREEK beforehand becomes a problem.

HUNTING THE LEGEND just doesn't take enough risks and it takes away possible scares and the characters of Chris and his friends aren't engaging enough to make up for the lack of fear. With this type of film you need one of the other. Without scares or interesting characters HUNTING THE LEGEND doesn't have a lot to go on. It just ends up falling a little shortly.

Rating: 2/5

*HUNTING THE LEGEND is currently available on DVD and digital download from Image Entertainment