SavageDirector: Jordan BlumCast: Martin Kove, Tony Becker, Lisa Wilcox, Anna Enger, Shane Callahan(MTI; US theatrical: 20 Sep 2011 (General release); 2009) Bigfoot must be so pissed - that is, if the argued over and rumored half-man, half-ape throwback missing link wannabe even exists.
From the late `60s and early `70s where it was a mainstay of In Search of_ style television exposes to the new millennium where every myth is an ironical joke just wait for a hipster comic to cut it apart, the legendary Sasquatch has dropped down many significant cultural pegs. Sure, for the areas which supposedly house the North American Yeti, the animal is nevertheless important. But for others, the smelly skunk monkey is but a punchline looking for a set-up to place it off.
Luckily, the makers of Savage have tested to have the famed monster a more menacing import. As the centrepiece of this otherwise average horror film, this Bigfoot is cruel, callous, fast, ferocious, and more than capable of cutting up his random victims. While the creature is so bad-ass, the story surrounding him needs a bit of work.
In Bear Valley National Park, a serial of unexplained killings have local ranger Owen Fremont (Tony Becker) concerned. With a wood fire raging out of master and a grouping of missing firemen MIA, he believes that rogue animals are responsible. To hold things from descending into chaos, he needs all the service he can get. In the meantime, the Mayor and the man in point of the Park Services are cooking up a strategy to regenerate the area. It doesn`t seem wholly on the up and up.
Elsewhere, a mate on the lam have decided to skin out in the area, hoping to avoid capture and poach a few animals. Similarly, a geeky scientist has hired suspect mountain man Jack Lund (Martin Kove) to carry him deep into the wood to find Bigfoot. Seems there have been several sightings of the animal over the years, and our duo want to break his whereabouts_and divvy up the fame. Unfortunately, this is one beast that`s not going down without a fight.
As you can say by the plot synopsis, Savage is a bit too story heavy for its own good. Just when we mean we`ll be getting down to some mean monster mayhem, when `it` of enlarged tootsies is going to go buck and run out the full region, director Jordan Blum shifts over to one of the many side concepts, and things go cockeyed. At first, it`s the dull deal between the two escaped criminals. What do we finally learn after spending far too much time with this pair? Well, that he`s abusive and she`s wanted for murder. Really essential to our night of terror, right? Or how near the uber dork who secures the services of the artist formerly known as the leader of the Cobra Kai. While Kove redeems himself with a sincere, self-effacing performance, their dialogue is all drips and drabs from a travel to Comic-Con.
These ancillary elements plague Savage, stealing much of its forward movement and tone of dread. When Blum stays inside the standard man vs. nature routine, when things are anchored soundly within the carnivore and its prey dynamic, we buy the fright facets. We get mired in the straw and murder and desire to see what happens when our title fiend finds itself face to face with something other than a backwoods bumbler. Blum adds a few nice touches to the conceit, making Bigfoot much more of a familiar forest dweller (running in a bow like position to avoid low lying limbs, accenting an ability to start over and up trees) and when minus the misleading misdirection, we really find some suspense. But scarcely like many indie horror films that don`t know when to provide well enough alone, Savage keeps padding. Granted, without these subtexts the movie would be five minutes long, but with them, the boredom begins.
Luckily, the performances also push us more toward entertainment than aggravation. Becker may cause a coffee cup surgically strapped to his hand (he is more addicted to rural Joe than Special Agent Dale Cooper) and delivers each line like he`s dressing down a lot of Boy Scouts, but he does make the front to give you think in his character`s concerns. Similarly, a bunch of bad teeth and a Burning Man wardrobe can`t alter Kove`s jolly persona. Elsewhere, the no-namers acquit themselves admirably. They don`t try to keep the film themselves and always find the measured response the use requires. Even in cases where their parts are ill-defined, they deliver.
That just leaves Blum and his screenwriters to bear up and be counted, and for the about part, they fall victim to a kind of predictable pitfalls. Making the Mayor and the Park Director guilty of subterfuge doesn`t work for interesting added color. Instead, it tends to muck things up. Since we live there is some interest with the attack on their part, we keep waiting for a denouement that almost doesn`t arrive. Similarly, we pass a big mass of time watching the site being set-up between our outlaw lovebirds. Yet little is actually explained. We have to wait until well into the third act before we learn what they did and why we should fear/cheer them. The assumption here is good for something scary - a disaster diverted creature, out of its usual food source, seeks man as a meal replacement. Blum begins here, and so gets carried out with unnecessary tangents.
Still, for what it represents, Savage is interesting if innocuous. When Charles Pierce`s "classic" The Legend of Muddy Creek is a far superior scare experience, you know you`ve got your work cut out for you. In that 1972 effort, the filmmaker stayed true to his source, resisting the impulse to "gussy up" things with narrative nonsense. Like the headlining years of its mythos, a standard Bigfoot story can impact the living daylights out of someone. The stranger in the wilderness is far more terrible than any backroom wheeling and dealing. Since its heyday, everyone`s favorite biped has been treated like trash. Thankfully, Savage strives to give him horrifying once again. Too bad there`s more fluff than ferociousness here.
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