The Bray Road Beast Reviewed
Posted by: Loren Coleman on September 18th, 2018
The Bray Road Beast
Director: Seth Breedlove
2018
Review by Loren Coleman
It takes you on a trip you never saw coming!
Small Town Monster’s latest feature documentary, The Bray Road Beast (2018) continues with the high standards achieved by the track record set by filmmaker Seth Breedlove.
Right off the bat, this film takes you down a country road in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, like so many of the rural routes we’ve come to know from Breedlove’s films. This rural lane is a chillingly isolated and scary one. Why does this roadway seem more beautiful and a bit more crisp than the last one? Are we being seduced by the sense of autumn on the screen, and those magical corn fields just at the corner of our vision, seen in several shots?
Where are we being taken?
High production values, which we have grown accustomed to expect from Breedlove’s films, don’t disappoint us here again. These films of his capture the backroad miles, mysteries, and monsters disappearing from America. And we are happy once again that Breedlove’s production company members are here to put the Bray Road Beast in his digital time capsule.
You do quickly settle into the framing of this story as an ancient picture book, about upright canids, wolflike hominids, something unreal but real, forgotten histories, modern dogmen, and even outrageously suggested werewolves. The chapters fly by and organize the tales logically, but you almost can’t believe what is unfolding.
The narration of Lyle Blackburn is steady and clear, but it is the thread of investigator and author Linda Godfrey’s voice that binds us to the questions and facts of the Beast. Godfrey, at once, seems shaken by what she is learning, almost wishes it away with a reporter’s ridicule, and then pulls us back in. It is remarkable to watch Breedlove do this with our emotions.
Some of the scenes are jarring. I thought the playing of an early Beast interview with an eyewitness on an old television in a farm field was genius. The concurrent soundtrack reminded me of electronic crickets and drove me crazy. Was it pigs being slaughtered? It emotionally disturbed me that much.
I actually expected to hear, after that interview, Lyle Blackburn’s narration come back in to tell me the young man had been killed in an automobile accident on Bray Road.
The thread of The Bray Road Beast is as winding as this obviously straight road feels, and yet you fear you are going to end at a dead end. Just like with what occurs when you watch so many reality television programs.
But that’s when Breedlove throws the biggest curve we’ve seen in any of his films.
You’ll have to watch The Bray Road Beast for the intriguing results from an ongoing series of trailcam investigations described by Linda Godfrey, as conducted by a former math teacher turned farmer. No spoilers here, but I was transfixed with startling photographic evidence like none ever seen on shows such as Finding Bigfoot or In Search Of.
It was a chilling near-conclusion to the documentary.
At the end, there’s that road again. Leading to the next true monster tale in another small town America.
A brilliant film. Atmospherically just right for viewing at Halloween.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Watched this the other night and really liked it. Small Town Monsters always does a really thorough job of investigating their topic and they always dig deep for information. Every one of their projects has given me new info on a topic which is cool.
The Beast of Bray Road doesn’t quite fit with other cryptids and has always fascinated me because it’s not a simple case of people mistaking bigfoot (as I often have thought the case) and STM offers a variety of different possibilities.
Definitely worth checking out as always!