REVIEW - WILLOW CREEK (BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT)

Bobcat Goldthwait's latest imperilled couple ventures into the forests of the Pacific Northwest, only to unexpectedly find themselves besieged less by Bigfoot than by themselves. Goldthwait takes the popular fad of found-footage-style filmmaking and, while he doesn't exactly encourage much enthusiasm in the device's enduring capabilities, nevertheless manages a respectable job of manipulating it. Not that he seems to be trying to create anything transcendent - indeed, Willow Creek plays as close to convention as it can, thereby making its subtle subversion all the more palatable. He's also sensible with the format, employing it in a believable context, and therein only when and where it makes sense. Impressively, he finds scope for more invention with this restrictive mode of moviemaking than most, including an exhilarating drag across the forest floor. Young partners Kelly and Jim are as average as they come (and as they often do) in this brand of indie cinema, which makes them perhaps less compelling protagonists, but gives the soft satire that Goldthwait inserts into his scenario more fertile ground on which to flourish. Willow Creek, not devoid of its share of unsettling sequences (indeed, it's a great deal more legitimately scary than any other found-footage film I can recall), exists primarily not to spook us but to pass wry comment on the destructiveness of male ambition, and the naivety and ignorance that frequently come with it. As realised in innocuous scenes of supposed set-up for the eventual onslaught of terror, Goldthwait is able to foreground his movie's message, without ever making you actively aware of it. And that onslaught does occur, contrary to what you might expect, though in a manner that befits the sense and sensitivity of Goldthwait's approach to this modest yet intelligent little scarer.