You are going to be in the middle of nowhere. I wouldn't stand on principle.

Mar 09, 2012 21:21



It's no secret that, in general, I prefer the beasts I observe on film to be of a lupine bent, but I'm not averse to stories about other types of hairy individuals. Take, for instance, 2011's Letters from the Big Man, which is all about the special bond that develops between a woman and a Sasquatch. First seen packing for a week-long excursion into the Oregonian forest to conduct a survey, ecologist Lily Rabe is eager to move on after a messy break-up and is more than ready to take on whatever comes her way. This is good because writer/director Christopher Munch is quick to reveal that she's being shadowed by a Sasquatch -- although "shadowed" isn't quite the word for it because this is a movie that is unafraid to put its hirsute creature front and center. (The Big Man, who's portrayed by Isaac C. Singleton, Jr., even gets a few close-ups, but those come later on.)

It isn't long before Rabe gets the feeling she's being watched, and when she stumbles across hiker Jason Butler Harner she believes he's the one who's been following her, which he denies. She also bunks down with heavily bearded logger Jim Cody Williams, who alludes to his own encounters with something in the woods, but doesn't elaborate further. Eventually she takes up residence in a rustic cabin and despite being unnerved by the noises in the woods starts leaving food out, which her friend Fiona Dourif rightly calls her on. Then a second encounter with Harner (an environmentalist working alongside Karen Black) leads to a tentative coupling of sorts, but he gets weirded out by her Sasquatch drawings, which are surprisingly detailed considering she hasn't seen one up close yet. Chalk it up to their mystical nature, which Rabe seems to be attuned to, to the point where she decides to go out and live among them like Dian Fossey. Should Munch decide to make a sequel (because it would be a shame if he couldn't get more use out of those terrific suits), the title Sasquatch in the Mist seems like a natural.

sasquatch

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