15 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT BIGFOOT (#1 WILL BLOW YOUR MIND): An Entertaining Satire of Clickbait Journalism

15 Things You Didn’t Know About Bigfoot (#1 Will Blow Your Mind), directed by Zach Lamplugh, is a mockumentary satire exploring clickbait and cryptozoology in equal measure. The film follows reporter Brian Emond who constantly gets stories that never fully feel like the real news he wishes to cover. On what he hopes is a final story before getting his own show, Emond must cover a Bigfoot convention and stay with various people in Georgia who hunt sasquatch on the regular.

Comedic Style

15 Things… establishes a strong comedic tone mixing somewhat absurdist humor with pitch-perfect cultural satire. The flow between different characters all creating their own online videos or VICE-style television shows brings to mind the surreal shifts in Final Deployment 4: Queen Battle Walkthrough which showed a world in which everyone in a chain through different video games all make their own walkthrough videos.

At times, the comedy is too focused on its satire of clickbait and VICE culture and not enough on the cryptozoology side of its story. When the comedy evoking that aspect of the film comes forward, it works well. In an especially memorable moment, Bigfoot is described with the line, “He’s a Georgia boy.” This simple line works in both its familiarity with how people talk and the surrealist idea that people would look at Bigfoot and think he’s just one of the guys hanging out in the woods.

For those looking for a gory horror-comedy, 15 Things… may disappoint, but its combination of Bigfoot hunting and online journalism satire makes for an exciting and memorable comedy with a fun, unique sense of humor. The horror comes out as the film progresses and allows for some hilarious twisty moments as Brian and company get closer and closer to the conclusion of their Sasquatchian mystery.

15 Things… does a wonderful job of combining the two most frequent “found footage” or “mockumentary” genres: horror and comedy in a way that brings to mind moments of The Blair Witch Project with the comedic attitudes and attention to capturing a specific genre that you see in the way Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! captures the feeling and style of cable access television.

15 Things… is continuously amusing, and exploring the comedy found within very different arenas and finding the similarities between the two allows for the comedy to feel fresh and exciting throughout.

Satire of Clickbait

15 Things… does a wonderful job of capturing the style and cultural style of clickbait journalism and VICE-style documentaries. The focus on a journalist wanting to tell real news stories works well to let the other people he works with feel that much more ridiculous, and also closer to real life.

Brian Emond’s reactions, or efforts to hide his reactions add more comedy to the film, while also exploring the more over-the-top aspects of clickbait.

His newest story being about Bigfoot is one of the more reasonable of the stories he covers which include things like “artisanal antibiotics”, but we live in a world where people pay more for raw water, so anything is possible.

Zach Lamplugh as director captures the style and flow of the medium of which they are satirizing so accurately that some moments feel too close to home, but are still just far enough away to allow us to laugh at the ridiculousness.

Brian Emond does a wonderful job against all these characters as the only one who seems to be from a world where these clickbait stories seem farfetched. Jeffrey Stephenson as the bigfoot expert gives a fun and memorable performance, especially when showing him against more over-the-top bigfoot hunters and characters living and making online videos in the North Georgia Appalachian foothills.

Conclusion

15 Things You Didn’t Know About Bigfoot (#1 Will Blow Your Mind) is an entertaining examination of clickbait culture as well as amateur cryptozoology with a style of humor that brings to mind the best of the Adult Swim infomercial series. The combination of extremely different lifestyles, each with their own obsessive and over-the-top characters makes for a film that is constantly hilarious and just close enough to real life.

Do you enjoy mockumentary-style films? If so, which are your favorites? Share your thoughts in the comments. 

15 Things You Didn’t Know About Bigfoot (#1 Will Blow Your Mind) releases on demand May 7th.

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