Review by Stephen Tronicek
STOMPING GROUND is a compelling and entertaining movie that still seems like a missed opportunity. It’s well acted, intense and uses the Jaws effect ( hiding the monster until the end), but it falls into the pitfall of just being good enough so easily that you realize why it could have been great pretty quickly.
However that’ll be saved for later since this is in fact a movie review not a movie “they should have done this,” and to that matter director Dan Reisner has crafted quite a good Bigfoot movie here. The film is about a Chicago guy, and his girlfriend who go to the Southern town she grew up in, and then camping to the woods with a couple of childhood friends in the interest of hunting Bigfoot. It sounds like the premise for some random 50’s horror film, and it’s pretty silly but the focussed emotions of the film help raise it up. The film is 80 minutes but doesn’t feel 30 because the central theme of the men fighting over the girlfriend stretches throughout the entire movie causing it all to gel. It’s good the focus is on that theme too. Every time something about Bigfoot is brought up the film takes on a silly veneer (it is Bigfoot after all), but the strong focus on this main plot makes for a more assured film than one might expect. The true acting skill required of actors John Bobeck and Tarah DeSpain makes for quite a show too. The film is so focussed on their central relationship that it becomes inherently important we believe it, and their chemistry is excellent.
But it’s the focus on this relationship that ultimately makes the film only good when it could have been so much more. All the possible drama comes from this relationship reaching a breaking point but the side characters don’t really get more to do then hit on the girlfriend and talk the crazy Bigfoot babble. All this leads to is the thought that there’s a wealth of potential drama that could have come from the group losing it under the pretense of a mythical monster being near them, but the film never goes that route. What’s there certainly isn’t bad but the film seems game for gore effects and this combined with more psychological horror could have made a great film.
STOMPING GROUND is a fine film, but it’s a film that might have be better if it had taken full advantage of it’s enticing premise. Still for 80 minutes it’s much better than any other Bigfoot movie you could come across.
