Cryptomundo
for Bigfoot, Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents and More

Sanchez has been trying to make such a Sasquatch-ian film since soon after Blair Witch took over the world in 1999. “This is really the third Bigfoot film that I’ve tried to get going. The first was a huge $80 million movie that we almost sold. There was a lot of interest in it, but it was a period piece, very challenging as far as a genre movie. And then I co-wrote a smaller version [that] we didn’t have much luck with,” said Sanchez. “There’s just kind of this fear, especially at the studio level, of Bigfoot movies.”

So Sanchez did what he does best: He went rogue. Working with a relatively small budget, he made a scalable found-footage film set in the woods. “We decided to take matters into our own hands. And write a movie that we can do, just a pretty simple story, really highlight the creature, and make the creature the star.” Sounds like familiar territory, no?

First, Sanchez needed a creature worth highlighting. With help from New Zealand-based Weta Workshop, one of the premiere prop shops in the business; design and effects specialists, Spectral Motion; and veteran creature actor Brian Steele (who, perhaps not coincidentally, played Harry in the Harry and the Hendersons TV show), Sanchez got more than he could have asked for. “That [first] footage blew us away. It really looks like a creature. It doesn’t look like a guy in a suit, it really looks like something that is not human,” said Sanchez.