Hi, I’m pumpkin ! I’m French and I’m a super bitch when it comes to reviewing movies in general and more particularly horror ones…

When Christopher talked about Hoax, I can admit I was pretty tempted… I love monsters, I love woods (pun intended…) and I thought it was that kind of 80s slasher, with silly boys, silly girls and a very serious one (who always bores the shit out of everyone), deliciously and so easily butchered till the last one !
I was wrong ! it seems that the horror genre has decided to leave teenagers alone lately… Shame…

But i digress…
The movie opens on young adults (sad..), camping in the nocturnal Colorado mountains. And there is blood. Not enough to my taste but like in lots of fields, I’m very hard to satisfy… More seriously a few splashes and that’s it !?! Not very motivating…
That’s when a producer gathers a team of scientists, a bodyguard (Brian Thompson, sigh…), the missing serious girl’s father , and decides to prove the existence of Bigfoot and make it a TV show !

So what does Hoax worth ?

Visually ! It’s beautiful ! The movie gives us stunning views of the Colorado mountains, and by night, it could give us the creeps, because they are ISOLATED, TRAPPED !!!
Shoshana Bush is pretty good in the appalling, full of herself blond bitch part. The rest of the cast is trying its best but they end up to be flat and caricatural… Essentially because of the script and how slow the whole movie is…
What is good is what we don’t see. The thermal imagimg camera is a good idea. It could be a Blair Witch Project kinda movie if only the characters were scared…
Sadly, Hoax isn’t worth it simply because the actors themselves are not convinced. No jumpscare and hardly any blood, no to mention the way people die… 
The first part of the end was easy to guess. The second part though was quite unexpected and very welcome ! But I leave you the judge of that !

Bigfoot is a solid myth in the US same as the Gevaudan beast in France ! But while our little kitty got a serious damn good movie about him, Hoax is practically making fun of that poor size 21 (talking about his feet…) hairy guy ! Watch the trailer and you’ll see pure horror, watch the movie and you’ll see lousy humor and pretty at easy yet in a serious danger to be cut into pieces, group of who knows what ! Hoax falls between two stools and it makes the movie uneven and the atmosphere too comfortable. It’s simply not scary…

Pumpkin
09/17/19