On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Journey (2021) Review

Seth Breedlove’s latest film On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Journey is a follow-up to his web series On the Trail of Bigfoot and his second film Beast of Whitehall. This time he and his crew go deep into the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York along with side trips to neighbouring areas of New England. for the first time, he says he believes bigfoot exists and that their mission this time is to actually encounter Bigfoot.

A lot of people don’t think of New York as the kind of place where you would find Bigfoot. I never realized just how much of the state is still forested until I found myself driving between Boston MA. and Buffalo NY. on a regular basis. From Worcester Massachusetts onwards it’s all mostly woodland with only the occasional city. Northwards the forested area reaches up into Quebec and Ontario. There is plenty of woodlands there for Sasquatch, if it exists, to hide in.

While On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Journey takes a side trip to Savoy State Forest near North Adams just over the MA/NY border, most of the film though concentrates on sightings on the New York side of the border. Especially those around the towns of Whitehall and Kinderhook. It also connects back to his previous investigations which were covered in Beast of Whitehall. For those curious about them, he’s put that film up on the Small Town Monsters YouTube channel.

Unlike his earlier films that relied on interviews with witnesses and animated recreations of incidents, On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Journey focuses more on his own trips into the forests with various researchers including Steve Kulls and Paul Bartholomew. Bruce Hallenbeck, one of Bartholomew’s co-authors on Monsters of the Northwoods is also among those interviewed. Oddly enough, despite the uncommon name, until I watched this I hadn’t realized Hallenbeck was the same person who wrote and/or directed films like Vampyre, The Drowned and The Witches of Sappho Salon.

Putting more of the focus on Breedlove himself, seeing him out in the woods and hearing his views on Bigfoot gives the film a more personal feel. We also hear his feelings on being out in the woods and away from everything after being in lockdown due to COVID. Unfortunately, most of the footage of him in the woods is rather dull. There’s nothing going on here that you can’t see on shows like Finding Bigfoot or Expedition Bigfoot. Thankfully it’s not as artificially hyped up as they are, everything in On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Journey feels authentic, but it’s still mostly guys wandering around the woods at night hearing things.

I’ve been following Breedlove’s films all the way back to The Minerva Monster and I’m starting to feel like he’s caught in a rut. He’s covering the same creatures over and over, revisiting sites of old investigations, etc. and that that gets old fast. Hopefully, branching out into investigating supernatural phenomena with The Mark of the Bell Witch and trying different formats like the faux feature film in Momo: The Missouri Monster will pay off for Small Town Monsters. Otherwise, the only people watching will be the hardcore cryptozoology buffs.

On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Journey will be available to purchase or rent on June 8th on a number of platforms from 1091 Pictures. You can check the Small Town Monsters website and Facebook page for more details.