OK, here's the thing. I think in order for the final 40 minutes to be effective, you have to watch the first 40 minutes. The problem is that the first 40 minutes will possibly may make you want to gauge your eyes out out of boredom. I fully understand the method of building to the climactic scenes, but it didn't make it any less tedious. All that being said, the last half of Willow Creek is legitimately frightening as hell. No gimmicks, no tricks, just two people alone in the woods with a camera and...something else.
The story is very simple and the whole movie is of the found footage variety. Jim and his girlfriend Kelly are doing a documentary of sorts on the bigfoot legend. Willow Creek is where the famed Patterson footage, that just about everyone has seen, was shot. The entire first half of the movie is them on their way to the famed site, eating lunch at a bigfoot themed roadside joint, staying at the bigfoot themed motel, talking to various people about the bigfoot legend. It goes on and on, and even as someone who loves bigfoot lore, it was more than enough. None of it is overly interesting, and while the characters themselves don't act quite as douchey as most found footage characters do, there was nothing about them that made me care all that much about their journey.
If you can get through all the preliminary shit, and that's a big if, because I nearly turned it off a few times myself. But if you can get through all of it, you will more than be rewarded. Once they arrive at their camping destination, things really take off as far as the tension and fright levels go.
Imagine you meet a girl. You know at some point in the evening you're going to have some of the most enjoyable sex you've ever had. But you also know you're going to have listen to her babble on for quite a while about her sister, her co-workers, what someone wrote on facebook, yadda yadda. This is the cinematic equivalent of that scenario.
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