A hopelessly millennial reporter gets the most important assignment of his career: Bigfoot. But after following a prominent cryptozoologist into the Appalachian foothills, he’s forced to answer the question “is a good story worth dying for?”

The woods are about to be lit! A movie that verges on silly in character and content but serious in satirizing immersive journalism, The VICE Guide to Bigfoot is a horror-comedy/monster-quest film with a little crime and romance thrown in for good measure. With brave artistic choices made by co-writer and director Zach Lamplugh, changes pace and tone throughout the film in order to capture this story in an interesting way, The VICE Guide to Bigfoot is quite a ride. Brace yourself for this cryptozoological mockumentary, here to provide you with yet more reasons to not venture into the deep woods of Alabama.

I don’t believe it has been since the likes of Bobcat Goldthwait’s cryptozoological documentary turned excellent found-footage film Willow Creek (2013) that I have so enjoyed a sasquatch movie. Though The VICE Guide to Bigfoot is a bit formulaic in that it checks off the expected woodland found footage tropes – 2 or 3 souls venturing out into the woods, someone says a line about having no cellphone service, eventually lost in the woods due to someone misreading/losing the guide – this film, however, still feels unique through its style of being a mockumentary that feels like a found footage film. If you like documentaries it is likely that you have seen a VICE documentary — the digital media broadcasting giant who has made a documentary about pretty much everything — The VICE Guide to Bigfoot, though in no way affiliated with VICE, uses VICE’s millennial-focused, host-lead, keep-the-camera rolling format and made a satirical romp into the woods in search of bigfoot.

The VICE Guide to Bigfoot follows burnt-out reporter Brian (Brian Emond). Typically tasked with doing clickbait stories for VICE, Brian takes yet another assignment after losing out on a big promotion he was hoping for to a hack TV-host. Soon winding up in Alabama with his long-time cameraman/producer, Zach (Zach Lamplugh), they find they have been tasked with following a local bigfoot expert, Jeff (Jeffrey Stephenson), who found fame in a supposed real video of bigfoot that went viral and who has since gained a YouTube following. As Jeff leads them deep into the Appalachian woods in order to find and capture the elusive creature on film, the trio stumbles upon more sinister monsters during their search, winding up in a life or death situation over content creation.

The film has a lot of wit and laughs at itself — and pop-culture journalism — in all of the right places. A cross between Willow Creek and Creep (2014), and even Scooby Doo which for the last 50 years has been teaching us that the worst monsters are very often human, The VICE Guide to Bigfoot combines them and produces a fun, and oddly heartfelt movie. The film stars Brian Edmond (who also co-wrote the film), Zack Lamplugh, and Jeffrey Stephenson; the chemistry between these three very different characters playing off of each other is comedic gold. Gaining further insight into the background of each other through sometimes impromptu dialogue brought empathy and authenticity to the characters, particularly Jeffrey Stephenson as Jeff, who somehow both balanced-out and then bolstered the comedic aspects of the film with his ‘it’s funny because it’s sad’ moments. In a time where TV and film audiences are fed a steady diet of zombie or vampire movies, this film is a breath of fresh air and it is definitely a fun addition to the bigfoot film genre.

Do you really want to live in a world where bigfoot isn’t real? The best known cryptozoological monster, bigfoot certainly does not get enough feature-film spotlight, especially for the number of people who believe in this creature. Making his directorial debut, Zach Lamplugh unleashed his monster mockumentary upon audiences tonight at the 2019 Austin Film Festival. If you missed the premiere, there is a follow-up screening on the 29th.