In 2008, during a father son hunting trip, Christopher Copeland’s dad left behind a smear of blood and a gun. Presuming he’d been dragged in to the woods, Christopher and the police searched for his dad to no avail. Fast forward to 2014 where, assuming his dad was dragged off by Bigfoot, Christopher and his friends team together to walk in to the woods, argue, chase noises, argue, get lost, argue some more, and eventually die off-screen set to ambient sounds of local wildlife.
When the most convincing performance in your movie is a trained German shepherd you know you have problems, and “Hunting the Legend” is essentially ninety minutes of nothing. There is absolutely nothing here. It’s a lot of people running around in the woods screaming in the air, screaming at the dark, and screaming at one another. There’s no peek of any kind of monster present, if there was ever one. There’s a hint that Christopher and his friends were really just being stalked by a serial killer, but it’s all so haphazardly tossed in as an afterthought, you don’t care enough to research the movie more.
I’m not sure what the hell that inscription in the closing scene meant, and frankly I’m too annoyed by the sheer empty void that is “Hunting the Legend” to find out. At one point there’s a five minute camp scene where the guard of the group is standing ground, and eventually falls asleep. Cut to the next morning where Christopher’s guide is screaming about leaving, insisting that they caught something on tape. After five minutes of arguing, we never see the actual damn tape. I have my own theory about “Hunting The Legend.” In 2008, Christopher’s dad abandoned him and ran off with the man in the cabin for a love affair.
Years later, Christopher went searching for his dad in the woods, unaware his dad was really in Hawaii running a surfboard hut with his lover Franco. Meanwhile Christopher led his group of friends and a poor dog in to the woods to be eaten by bears, and killed by a mountain man who mistook them for trespassers. Hey, it’s better than anything you’ll see in “Hunting the Legend” that’s for damn sure. With found footage movies, there’s a thin line between people facing the fear of the unknown, and morons running around in the dark chasing noises.
Guess which kind of found footage film “Hunting the Legend” is.