Now available on DVD
Cast:
Texas Battle as Tommy
Melissa Carnell as Jennifer
Damon Lipari as Dave
Shavon Kirksey as Maya
Stephanie Honore as Brooke
Directed by Brian T. Jaynes
Review:
Boggy Creek is a huge tease in more ways than one. It’s a creature feature with hardly any creature action to speak of. It’s a B-movie that hints at, but never follows through, with gratuitous nudity. And worst of all, it’s a tedious bore and no fun whatsoever.
Jennifer (Melissa Carnell) is traumatized by memories of her late father, who not long ago was found by the side of the road somewhere near Boggy Creek, an isolated small town in Texas that doesn’t exactly scream vacation destination.
Naturally, since essentially all memories of her father involve a cabin in Boggy Creek, Jennifer decides to spend a quiet week there with her best friend Maya (Shavon Kirksey). Maya, great friend that she is, invites her boyfriend Tommy (Texas Battle) and her friend Dave (Damon Lipari). Dave invites his annoying girlfriend Brooke (Stephanie Honore).
The rest of the group isn’t looking for a quiet weekend, and they have absolutely no sympathy for a young woman whose father was recently found dead in the area. It is very easy to root for the creature.
One of the most glaring problems with Boggy Creek is evident early on. It takes itself way too seriously. Balancing melodrama with horror isn’t easy, and director Brian T. Jaynes is not up for the challenge.
We are meant to feel bad for Jennifer. There are numerous flashbacks to happier times with her father, complete with sappy music and an oh-so-serious tone. Throw in abysmal acting and after-school special dialogue and plotting, and there are plenty of unintentional laughs throughout.
That would be tolerable if the movie delivered in the creature department, but it does not. The bigfoot-type beast is hardly on screen for well over an hour, and when it is, it’s only for a few seconds. There’s a little gore, but only once or twice during the entire movie do we actually see the beast kill someone. The vast majority of the gore is shown after the attack is over.
It’s almost always refreshing to see man-in-suit makeup effects rather than CGI, but the creature is incredibly underwhelming. It’s really hairy and has very sharp teeth, but it’s nothing special, and we rarely see it anyway.
There’s no build up or sense of mystery, no attempts to generate any suspense. And in addition to a lack of creature action, viewers are subjected to three separate gratuitous sex scenes yielding no nudity. Why bother? One is especially humorous as it occurs in a flashback. A man tells Jennifer about the night his wife went missing. She was nabbed as they swam naked.
Boggy Creek is low-rent amateur hour all around. It looks cheap and feels cheap. Had it bothered to showcase even a Syfy Channel level of creature mayhem, it might have been entertaining. Instead we get melodrama you’d expect to see on a daytime soap opera, only worse, with no more than a few minutes of monster attacks.
Carry on. Nothing to see here.
