TRACK: SEARCH FOR AUSTRALIA'S BIGFOOT

Featuring: Attila Kaldy, Yowie Dan, Tony Jinks, Duo Ben, Gary Opit, Neil Frost, Mathew Crowther, Robert Grey and Robert Venables.
Director: Attila Kaldy

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

Global sightings of bipedal hominids, aka Bigfoot, and the number of documentaries chronicling those sightings have long since passed tipping point. A search of any of the streaming providers will reveal a thriving genre subset that posits every possible theory on the ‘real story’ behind the elusive, mythical beast; from ‘missing link’ and ‘undiscovered ape’ to ‘alien life form’ and ‘inter-dimensional visitor’, Bigfoot films are a big industry.

Australia has its own legendary ‘forest giant’ and so it has its own documentarians contemplating the nature of the beast. Most notable amongst them is director/producer Attila Kaldy, a veteran of almost two decades of speculative supernatural small screen content. His latest mini-feature is Track: Search for Australia’s Bigfoot, an engaging, often introspective examination as much of the men who hunt the mythical creature as the creature itself.

Kaldy transports his audience deep into the rugged Blue Mountains hinterland 90 minutes west of Sydney. A majestic section of the Great Dividing Range and some of the most dense eucalypt bushland on the continent, it has long been thought to provide a vast home to Australia’s alpha cryptid, the Yowie. It takes little time for Kaldy to introduce us to his first expert, ‘Yowie Dan’, himself a popular figure amongst believers and sceptics alike.

Dan (pictured, below) has the best footage to date of an alleged Yowie – a few frames captured quite by accident on a solo expedition deep into the lower mountain region. Kaldy utilises parapsychologist and cryptid witness Tony Jinks to verify the authenticity of Dan’s footage in an extended sequence that goes a long way to convince that something unexplainable was filmed. The mid-section of the film affords a lot of time to Rob’s Gray and Venables, of fellow investigation outfit Truth Seekers Oz, who recount their own encounters.

Much of the first half of Track: Search for Australia’s Bigfoot travels some well-worn paranormal television tropes, albeit delivered in a slick, pro tech package by Kaldy. Green night-vision sequences, monochromatic stagings (including a respectful nod to the iconic 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage), first-person accounts that preach very much to the cryptid choir and a moody soundscape highlighted by an evocative score by Daljit Kundi are effectively employed.

The production explores some new angles in a more compelling final stretch. Cryptozoologists Gary Opit and Neil Frost offer counterpoints to commonly held assumptions (for example, from the bio-geographical perspective, the probability of an Australian ‘ape’ is unlikely) and address such fascinating tangents as the possible existence of a ‘marsupial cryptid’, complete with pouch. The relationship between Australia’s indigenous tribes and the hominid legend is explored, albeit briefly; the ancient people’s perspective on their land’s cryptozoology is worth its own documentary examination, surely? And, to drive home the fear wrought by an encounter with a ‘forest giant,’ Kaldy’s effects team create striking images based upon eyewitness descriptions.

Kaldy leaves a few threads dangling for the doubters. When ‘experts’ stumble upon what they claim to be a cryptid’s nest and shelter, why don’t they collect some hair or scat? Regardless, Track: Search for Australia’s Bigfoot is a top-tier addition to a crowded, often sensationalised, documentary field. Much like it’s subject matter, one hopes it will be discovered and afforded the respect it deserves.

TRACK: Search for Australia's Bigfoot will be released in North America on DVD and Blu-ray on April 21; other territories to follow. More information about the film, visit the official Paranormal Investigators website.