Written by Luke Barnes
Dawn Of The Beast is a horror film directed by Bruce Wemple. The plot sees a group of graduate students head out into the woods in search of Bigfoot, however, what they find is far more terrifying.
There is only one truly good horror film about Bigfoot and that is the Lost Coast Tapes, the rest of them are frequently terrible. I am pleased to say that though this film has issues, this falls into the category of good Bigfoot horror, and does provide a nice entry into the subgenre.
I think the creature design on both Bigfoot and the Wendigo is very well done, and though we only see brief amounts of them over the course of the film they do leave an impression and look suitably scary or perhaps monstrous.
In terms of scares, the film isn’t scary, it has a few tense sequences and attempts a few jump scares but to limited success.
The issues with this film are all structural and fundamental. The pacing in this film is way off and what is a relatively short film ends up feeling far longer to watch then it actually is- developing a bloat. Moreover, the acting from the human characters is incredibly weak: yes I understand that most wont be watching this to see how layered and well written the human characters are, rather instead to watch monster carnage, but it did impact on my viewing experience.
Overall, a good Bigfoot horror film that is brought down by several glaring issues.
Pros.
Using its monster well
The creature design
A few tense sequences
Cons.
The pacing
The acting
3.5/5
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