The Lost Coast Tapes: Bigfoot Found Footage

My quest to seek out good examples of found footage horror continues with The Lost Coast Tapes. Ahead of Blair Witch director Eduardo Sanchez's return to found footage with Bigfoot movie Exists come this surprisingly good effort to make the Bigfoot myth scary again.

The Lost Coast Tape, like so many other found footage films is short but at over 80 mins, it's longer than most I've seen. What is most important about The Lost Coast Tapes is that, for a change, it does not outstay its welcome. Found footage films can too often become running around shaking a camera in the dark way too early and they quickly descend into virtually incomprehensible repetitive nonsense.

However The Lost Coast Tapes takes a while setting up some amusing characters and an intriguing premise. A disgraced investigative journalist and his team head out to Bigfoot territory to interview a man who claims to have dead body of a Bigfoot in his possession. The cynical team are quite comical, particularly in their amusing banter with the serious stern Drybeck, the man who claims to have evidence of the monster's existence.

The entire cast are excellent in their roles, the camera work is far from the annoying mess of many other found footage films and the script and story maintain interest and suspense for almost the entire running time. It all ends with an added layer of mystery and the potential for an interesting twist but like with so many others of these films, it leaves the audience completely unaware of exactly what happens at the end. It will be unsatisfying to many and fails to match the abrupt, bleak ending of classics such as Blair Witch and Cloverfield.

The Lost Coast Tapes if far from terrible though and much better than the likes of Tape 407, Monster, Atrocious and many others. Its sense of humour is its real strength, making the ride worth taking with the amusing characters. The highlight is the black guy's reaction early on when asked if he wants to come on the trip to the woods to go looking for Bigfoot. It's nice when these kind of films don't take themselves too seriously sometimes. Give it a watch if you like this sort of thing!

Below is the trailer: