‘Bigfoot’ trods well-worn ground

“How cool would it be if we made a movie that looked like recovered footage from some kind of expedition gone wrong? Nobody’s seen that before!”

Only that sort of willful ignorance could have inspired “Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes.” There’s simply no other explanation for how filmmakers could seem so blissfully unaware of the entire cycle/glut of films that present themselves as “found footage.” “Bigfoot” wanders straight into every tired trope and trap of the conceit.

By the time a character actually says, “No matter what happens, don’t stop filming,” the movie has long since toppled over into some kind of mad self-parody, lost in its own hall of mirrors of awfulness.

Directed by Corey Grant, the film follows a disgraced television journalist (Drew Rausch) trying to land the story that will get his career back on track by revealing as a hoax the purported “Bigfoot Hunter” (Frank Ashmore) who claims to possess the body of a young Sasquatch.

It goes without saying that once stranded at the hunter’s remote compound, the production crew finds more than it expected.

The only real discovery in “Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes” is that filmmakers can be so blinkered and unthinking. — Mark Olsen

“Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes.” No MPAA rating. Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes. At Laemmle’s Music Hall, Beverly Hills.