“Sawtooth Mountain” Looks for Elusive Scares & Bigfoot
Places all around the world have their own local legends. Sometimes, those stories of strange cryptids break containment and reach a far wider audience. Even if someone has never set foot in the Pacific Northwest, they’ve heard stories of Bigfoot. There’s a famous sighting of Bigfoot that was captured by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin, referred to as the Patterson–Gimlin film. It’s a short film made in 1967 that claims to show a female Bigfoot. Whether or not you believe in the validity of this movie, it’s what turned Bigfoot into a globally recognizable mystery. In Matt Kinsces’ Sawtooth Mountain, a Bigfoot sighting might be the least of your worries.
There’s a market for supernatural and spooky locales. Ghost tours, haunted houses, the works. Two brothers, Bobby (Landon Liboiron) and Clint (Gabriel Carter), want to cash in on this trend by creating a Bigfoot-themed cabin in the remote forest of the Pacific Northwest. They aren’t exactly raking in the money, and they point to a lack of recent Bigfoot sightings as the reason. When three college students, Kiera (Sydney Scotia), Dillon (Jude Wilson), and Liv (Matreya Scarrwener), book the cabin for a weekend getaway, the brothers decide to give them something to rave about.
Courtesy of Sawtooth Mountain
Throughout Sawtooth Mountain, there’s a push and pull about the truth of Bigfoot. Some, like Clint and Dillon, are firm believers. Others, Liv and Kiera, could be swayed, but it’s Bobby who isn’t concerned about whether there’s actually a hairy creature out there. He just sees these stories as a means of making money. He has his eyes on another nearby location that has had some UFO sightings. While not the main focus of the film, it’s an interesting theme to touch on. This idea of how we commodify the unprovable and what it is about these tall tales that brings people to new places. All of this traces back to humanity’s need to share stories as a means of creating community.
As with most movies with a premise like this, it’s never really about the Bigfoot in the room. It’s about something else, something that can be hidden behind the furry monsters who lurk in the woods. Sawtooth Mountain is about survival, yes, but also more. Not just how these college kids get themselves out of the life-or-death situation they’ve found themselves in, but how they can craft an existence that’s meaningful to them. Sawtooth Mountain holds its hairy cards to its chest, but confidently deals a tension-building hand in a game of survival that’s buoyed by a strong cast of actors.
Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Letterboxd, TikTok, YouTube, & Facebook. Check out Movies with My Dad, a podcast recorded on the car ride home from the movies and I Think You’ll Hate This, a podcast hosted by two friends who rarely agree.
support your local film critic!
~
support your local film critic! ~
Beyond the Cinerama Dome is run by one perpetually tired film critic
and her anxious emotional support chihuahua named Frankie.
Your kind donation means Frankie doesn’t need to get a job…yet.