Mister-Creeper

I was very surprised to see such a low rating (currently 3.6) when I came here to leave my own rating (then decided to leave a review as well). It's almost like a lot of the people who are leaving the 1 star reviews have never seen a truly awful horror film before. Birdemic anyone? There's plenty of 80s SOV horror films that are the definition of terrible.

I've seen thousands of bad horror movies, and truly enjoy hundreds of them. Zombie 4: After Death is one of my favorite horror films ever. I'm a huge fan of the old 70s and 80s Italian horrors (Zombie 4 being one of them). I love nearly all of Lucio Fulci's filmography, along with Hell of the Living Dead, Burial Ground, Monster Dog, Paganini Horror, Howling 2, Howling III, Howling V: The Rebirth, The Beast Must Die, The Werewolf and the Yeti, The Dark Side of the Moon, Spookies, The Slayer, Demon Wind, The Final Terror, Cannibal Apocalypse, and many others. So I know what truly bad horror films are, and Hoax isn't that bad. In fact, I rather enjoyed it.

I've really been getting into Bigfoot/Yeti films recently. There's a lot more of them than I realized. I own The Legend of Boggy Creek, Boggy Creek (2010), Exists, Willow Creek, Creature from Black Lake, Abominable, Clawed, and a few others. Hoax will be added to my physical media collection at some point.

A lot of people thought it started out good, then took a wrong turn. I rather enjoyed the twist near the end. It was unexpected and different. I thought the acting was good for the most part, and even when it wasn't it was still adequate enough for my taste. I'm glad I decided to watch it - it was well worth my time. So if you're like me, enjoy watching Bigfoot movies, or tend to like what mainstream people would consider bad movies, then give Hoax a shot.

But I just don't. It's not the acting because that's passable. I mean, I've watched and thoroughly enjoyed much worse acting in a plethora of other movies. The Jack is a pretty creepy looking creature - from the waist up - but when shown completely out of the box it just looked too much like a guy in a costume. The soundtrack was okay at times. So ultimately, for me, it just came down to the story and the atmosphere, or in this case, lack of atmosphere.

I completely understand it's a low budget film and expecting a masterpiece is unreasonable, but when done right, even a micro budget film can impress. I know we can't expect every low budget director starting out to be Sam Raimi, but plenty of other directors have done more with much less. Had the script been better, the location more foreboding, and the atmosphere much more dreadful, then I personally would have enjoyed this much more. But still, as is, it's a solid 5 out of 10 in my book.