Dawn of the Beast

Man, there is a profusion of Bigfoot movies out there, huh?  I don't think that humanity is prepared to learn the actual count of them.  There are too many.  They're all around us!  First, you would have to cleave and dichotomize Bigfoot flicks from Yeti/Sasquatch exploits.  That rives our number in half, but the sum total of cheese (and let's face it; there isn't much non-cheese in this jumble) is still daunting.  Perhaps "unmanageable" is the more accurate word, although I only have to review one of these stunt escapades.  For the record, the best routs in this outlying subgenre are 1980's Night of the Demon and 1957's The Abominable Snowman.

An enchanting double feature, that.  Demon offers campy gore, while Snowman mines the survivalist horror of pitting Peter Cushing against the elements (plus the creatures in the elements).  Last year's Dawn of the Beast has the resources it needs to monger both splatter and charm in equal amounts.  The fact that it doesn't, shall we say, nail the dismount shouldn't surprise you, especially if you're as surfeited as I am.  I don't like being the cloyed dissident.  But am I a dissident, really?  At least half of the reviews I've found agree with me, so I challenge the views espoused by Pearl Jam.  No, sir; a dissident is not here.

The premise is intriguing.  Cryptozoological students take a field trip of sorts to a cabin in the woods.  It just so happens that this cabin is stationed in the northeast (city and state withheld to protect the innocent on account of a faulty memory) amidst a veritable ganglion of Bigfoot sightings.  It goes without saying that they run into trouble.  I know what you're thinking.  In all probability, you're yawning.  I'm not done with the synopsis yet, sucka!  As it turns out, Bigfoot shares this coppice with a fellow cryptid.  Does the term "Wendigo" mean anything to you?  I hope so because I'm not in the mood to be further inconvenienced by Dawn.  For the love of Bron Breakker, does everything need to be spelled out for you?

The cast is a grab bag of talent.  Most of the thespians do try, the results of their efforts varying wildly.  With certain folks, it's a case of performing above and beyond the constraints of their character.  Adrian Burke, for instance, clearly has more in the tank than what his role requires.  His role, if you're curious (shut up), is a hipster boyfriend who tells dad jokes and misses telltale signs that his peers deplore his presence.  Yeah.  On the subject of poor writing, the script was penned by Anna Shields.  You can catch her in front of the camera as Lilly, and as irony would have it, she appeared in 2020's Monstrous, a friggin' Bigfoot reel.  Oh, and she wrote it, too!

I don't know what the deal is here, but director Bruce Wemple also directed Monstrous.  And he directed 2020's The Retreat.  That b-picture concerned itself with the Wendigo.  The creature design is eerily similar to that of the Wendigo critter(s) in Dawn.  The fuck?  Unless I'm mistaken, the three films are not linked in any bizarro "monsterverse" way.  I don't get it, guys.  Listen, the dish before me is Dawn of the Beast.  Would I recommend renting it?  Not particularly.  We aren't talking about a pernicious washout, but it doesn't excel where it should.  Aside from drizzly, steam-stashed bloodshed, the exposition is a mere mixtape of horror hits.  At one point, I thought I hit play on the remake of The Evil Dead by mistake.

The last five minutes.  Without spoiling anything, I can vouch for the last five minutes.  Honestly, that should have been the whole idea from frame one.  It would have been fun.  On a bun.  Yikes, I've used "should have" or "would have" too many times.  I need Tylenol.