Amazingly Bizarre!

Found Footage: The Making of the Patterson Project (2025) -A documentary crew follows a group of passionate amateur movie makers. The group stumbles and scams their way toward their cinematic vision: a “found footage” horror film about three missing college students and Bigfoot.

Directed by Max Tzannes

Starring Brennan Keel Cook, Chen Tang, Erika Vetter, Dean Cameron, Suzanne Ford

Why I Liked It – This is the love child of “This Is Spinal Tap” and “The Blair Witch Project”, and it’s such a beautiful baby!

What an amazingly bizarre movie this is! I enjoy the mockumentary style (I love the entire Christopher Guest filmography), but this one offers a really cool twist as it goes on. The story is based on the famous film clip of “Bigfoot” shot in 1967 in northern California. Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin shot the footage that to this day stands at the heart of the belief in the legendary hominid of the Pacific Northwest. An entire industry has grown up around it, and this movie plays with the devotion of some of those believers.

At the heart of this movie are Chase (Cook), his girlfriend Natalie (Vetter), and Chase’s best friend Mitchell (Tang). Chase is the visionary, with a dream of creating the ultimate found-film horror movie. With the help of their principal investor, Frank (Cameron), the owner of a local used furniture store, Chase is putting together a budget for the movie. There’s a definite nod to Ed Wood in his character, as a dreamer with only tentative connections to the real world. The production will face obstacle after obstacle once they get to their shooting location. That’s when things get really, really weird.

It’s also the point where the director Max Tzannes and his writing partner David San Miguel do something really cool. They slowly slide from the ridiculousness of the characters and their interactions (trying to convince a dotty old lady to make a large investment in return for meeting the “star” of the movie, Alan Rickman. (who, of course, died several years earlier) to an honest-to-god-made-me-jump-several-times horror movie. They slide from a comedy with a side of horror to horror with a side of comedy. And they do it really well!

Shot in just 13 days, this movie has serious rough edges. That’s the essence of a mockumentary; there’s a certain patched together feeling to it all. The documentarians following Chase are in the background almost entirely, letting the story play out before their eyes. What they see is bizarre, amusing, frightening, and beyond explanation. What you will see is a delightfully different kind of movie.

You can stream “Found Footage: The Making of the Patterson Project” on Amazon Prime, Google Play, YouTube, and Apple TV.

Rating – **** Recommended