Bigfoot Is the Least of Their Problems

Read Time:7 Minute, 32 Second

MOVIE REVIEWS
Sawtooth Mountain
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Genre: Horror, Thriller, Comedy
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 1h 24m
Director: Matt Kincses
Writer: Matt Kincses
Cast: Sydney Scotia, Landon Liboiron, Gabriel Carter, Jude Wilson, Matreya Scarrwener, Erin Boyes, Donal Thoms-Cappello
Where to Watch: available now; watch here: www.tubitv.com

RAVING REVIEW: The irony about SAWTOOTH MOUNTAIN is that Bigfoot barely needs to be there for everything to go horribly wrong. Writer/director Matt Kincses starts our story with people who desperately want Sasquatch to be real, adds someone willing to fake that for money, and then watches an increasingly stupid series of decisions turn a tourist attraction into something far more dangerous.

Bobby and Clint are brothers trying to keep their Bigfoot-themed bed-and-breakfast business alive. Bobby, played by Landon Liboiron, is the businessman of the pair, although calling his plans sensible would be generous. Gabriel Carter's Clint is the real believer, more emotionally invested in legendary stories and considerably easier to push around. Their operation depends on visitors paying for the chance to see something in the woods, and business isn't exactly booming. Bobby's solution is simple enough. If people aren't seeing Bigfoot, then give them Bigfoot.

That’s the key to what gets SAWTOOTH MOUNTAIN moving, but the movie is smart enough to make the scam itself more interesting than the creature supposedly inspiring it. Bobby isn't particularly concerned with proving whether Sasquatch exists. He recognizes an audience willing to pay for an experience, and if the woods aren't cooperating, he's happy to manufacture one. He even starts looking toward UFO tourism as another possible source of income. Cryptid culture, ghost tours, paranormal attractions, and supposedly haunted properties all exist somewhere between belief and commercial entertainment. SAWTOOTH MOUNTAIN understands how easily those things can overlap, especially once money enters the equation.

Three friends become the latest customers. Kiera, Dillon, and Liv arrive looking for a weekend away, with different levels of enthusiasm about the Bigfoot side of the trip. Sydney Scotia's Kiera is the skeptic, Jude Wilson's Dillon is much more willing to believe, and Matreya Scarrwener's Liv falls somewhere between wanting to have fun and getting caught up in whatever chaos might happen. One person wants proof, another wants to believe, and Bobby mostly wants everybody to leave impressed enough to tell other people. The film spends a decent amount of time establishing those mindsets before revealing just how poorly prepared the brothers are for someone discovering what they're doing.

Once the fake sighting is exposed, SAWTOOTH MOUNTAIN stops pretending it's primarily just a mystery/thriller. The brothers suddenly face a much bigger problem: evidence of their scam could ruin the business they're already struggling to save. Bobby responds with the kind of escalating logic horror movies thrive on. One bad solution creates a worse problem, which requires an even worse solution. That's where the film becomes considerably more entertaining.

At some point, the characters stop behaving like people who might resolve the situation through a difficult conversation and start behaving like people determined to create an entire movie's worth of trouble. Kincses doesn't hide the silliness of that progression. Bobby and Clint aren't professional killers or criminal masterminds. They're two increasingly panicked men trying to stay ahead of a situation they barely understand themselves.

Gabriel Carter gets some of the movie's best moments because Clint is the one most visibly evolving under the pressure. Carter commits once things start to slide out of control, sometimes pushing the performance toward outright absurdity. That won't work for everyone, but the heightened approach fits a movie where competence disappears almost as quickly as common sense.

Liboiron plays the opposite side well. Bobby likes believing he has a plan, even as it collapses around him in real time. The brothers have a more interesting dynamic than the three visitors because there's something inherently funny about watching Bobby continue making decisions while Clint gradually becomes less predictable. It feels like a setup we’ve seen before, but it's so much fun because they really lean into the good cop/bad cop style.

The guests don't really receive the same level of definition. Scotia has the strongest position as Kiera because skepticism naturally makes her the person most likely to recognize when something doesn't add up. Dillon and Liv are likable enough company, but the screenplay generally needs them as participants in the increasingly ridiculous survival situation rather than as fully developed people. That thin characterization limits some of the suspense. SAWTOOTH MOUNTAIN wants us invested once the weekend becomes dangerous, yet the movie hasn't done enough beforehand to make these potential victims feel as important. It's easier to become interested in what ridiculous thing the brothers will do next than to be too concerned about everyone escaping.

At only 84 minutes, SAWTOOTH MOUNTAIN isn't long, but the first half feels noticeably more patient than what follows. The early Bigfoot conversations and cabin setup establish the premise clearly, although some scenes feel like they repeat or stretch situations that could have reached their point faster. Once the scam is discovered, the movie changes gears enough that the earlier restraint can almost feel like it belonged to a different film. The second half leans further into the chase, bad decisions, threats, and dark comedy. That shift gives SAWTOOTH MOUNTAIN more personality, but it also reveals that the opening might have benefited from some of the same energy.

Calling this a Bigfoot movie is also slightly misleading. Sasquatch is important to the premise, but viewers hoping for a full creature feature may be disappointed by where Kincses takes the story. The actual subject is the people selling Bigfoot, the people buying the experience, and what happens when maintaining the illusion becomes more important than behaving rationally. That approach works for me more often than it doesn't because another straightforward Bigfoot-in-the-woods movie would have been much less interesting. The idea of brothers staging sightings to support a struggling cabin is a good hook, and Kincses finds enough comedy in their worsening decisions to keep the film from becoming generic.

There’s a strange charm in how small everything works here. Bobby isn't trying to become rich by launching some enormous conspiracy. He's trying to keep a weird little business alive. The friends haven't traveled into the wilderness looking for proof that will change humanity. They're just spending a weekend at a novelty rental. Even the disaster feels contained until everyone involved makes it bigger.

SAWTOOTH MOUNTAIN ultimately works better as a dark comic thriller than as a horror film. It isn't especially scary, the body count isn't huge, and Bigfoot fans expecting a creature feature won't get what they’re expecting. What it does offer is an amusing escalation of insanity, built around people who keep making their situation worse because admitting the truth seems worse than whatever terrible idea they come up with next.

Kincses takes a familiar cabin-in-the-woods idea somewhere stranger than expected, and Carter and Liboiron give the brothers enough dysfunctional energy to carry the movie once the deception falls apart. SAWTOOTH MOUNTAIN spends so much time worrying about Bigfoot that the people looking miss the real danger! A man in a Sasquatch costume can only cause so much trouble. Give two struggling brothers a failing business and absolutely no ability to stop making bad decisions, and suddenly the woods become much more dangerous.

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[photo courtesy of EAGLE POINT PICTURES, WHISPERING PINES PRODUCTIONS, GENERATIVITY PRODUCTIONS, POPTERNATIVE PICTURES, SCOTIA ENTERTAINMENT]

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