Valley of the Sasquatch

This is a low budget monster feature. The Sasquatch are played by actors in suits, but we see them so sparingly thanks to director John Portanova that, to me, that's never a problem - I often prefer practical effects to CGI anyway, unless there are millions of dollars on offer.

Portanovaa also produces and writes, so his story doesn't over-exert its ambition, meaning that every set piece can at least be adequately realised. This restraint is commendable, and I enjoyed the resultant film as a result.

A few nice twists, some agreeable characters and a fair pace. Can't say fairer than that. My score is 7 out of 10.

I love Bigfoot movies...good ones from Harry and The Henderson's to weak one's like, well, The Hunting Grounds. Just nothing original about it. The story line, the Bigfoot costumes, the acting, just not very good. Is it hard to make anything original when it comes to Bigfoot movie's nowadays? Probably. But at least try. I watched The Hunting Grounds right after watching Primal Rage. Maybe that was the mistake. Although PR basically copied Predator in a lot of ways, I still thought it was an original idea when it came to Bigfoot movies. The costumes weren't bad at all. Save your time and watch PR, Exists, Big Legend, Stomping Ground, and there are some good documentaries on Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. There's a lot more Bigfoot movies on Prime to check out. I'm on to the next one.

You have to make sure that you have appropriate expectations if you sit down to watch this. Seriously - it's a movie about Bigfoot! It's not going to win any Academy Awards. It's not even trying to win any Academy Awards. So you don't come in to this looking for a great movie that's destined to become a classic. You come into this hoping to find a kind of cheesy, low budget, B-Movie at best. And if you come into this with that expectation, you can sit back and enjoy it - because that's basically what you get. It is low budget, it is cheesy and it features basically an entirely unknown cast whose performances are less than outstanding. It features an unfortunate stereotype of the sole Mexican character as a druggie, and it inexplicably includes a flirting scene at the start of the move as young Michael flirts with a girl in town. She gets credited in spite of the fact that she's on screen for probably less than a minute and is given absolutely no lines. She smiles and waves at Michael. That's it. The actress is named Jordan Neslund, it's apparently the only film she's ever been in and for the rest of her life she can rent this and show it to her friends as proof that she was once in a movie. Good for her. The movie accomplished at least that.

Otherwise the story revolves around four guys (a father-son, their brother/uncle, and the aforementioned Mexican Sergio) who find themselves staying at a run down cabin in the woods and then go on a camping trip to hunt. And, of course, they encounter Sasquatch - several actually, and not a particularly friendly bunch!

There were things I liked about this. Aside from the lifelong memory for Jordan Neslund, even though the performances were unspectacular, I liked the characters. The four guys were all very different from one another, which set up a lot of believable tension between them. That helped move things along. And somebody somewhere had done some actual Sasquatch research. I love Sasquatch stories (don't believe in the big hairy guy, but love the stories) and I appreciated the relationship between this movie and the "Ape Canyon incident" of 1924, when several miners in a cabin reportedly were attacked by several "ape-men." Actually, that story was even told around the campfire as a way to scare Sergio after he had the first encounter with "something" that nobody else believed was a Sasquatch. I would say that this was probably very loosely based on the stories of that incident - and to be honest, I'd really prefer if somebody actually made a serious movie about that incident - whether attributing it to "ape-men" or to local youths (which is the prevailing theory.) That could actually be a decent movie.

As for this one - just sit back, set your expectations accordingly, and watch this. It's not going to be the best movie you've ever seen. But it's not a bad way to pass some free time. (5/10)

After waiting for over a year for this movie to come I finally got to watch it. It's not that good. Bad acting and uninteresting characters. If you want to watch a really good Bigfoot movie I highly suggest watching "Exists". Now that's a Bigfoot movie. "Hunting Grounds" pales in comparison.

They taught us that if you're going out into the wilderness, you'd best bring everything you need to survive with you. And that still holds true today. I thought this flick was pretty good for a monster movie. About what you'd expect, maybe better than the average Big Foot story. I didn't 'get' the Sergio character, though. He seemed to me to be unnecessary and kind of annoying.