Feet of Death

Set amidst the lush forests and haunted towns of Mount St Helens, Feet of Death stars Andrew Jacob Brown as Jason Easterly, a United States Forest Service ranger who finds himself pulled into a disturbing investigation into the death of an internet personality. While the film is shot competently, making great use of the beautiful locations, the characters are sadly underdeveloped and the narrative stretched thin.

Feet of Death opens with a young woman wandering through a beautiful forest in Mount St Helens. The stakes of the film are firmly established when she suddenly comes across the mutilated body of a man, revealed to be YouTube personality Chris Dixon (Eric Berger). Director James Chick shows the audience the day leading up to Chris’ death, where he had been investigating mysterious deaths and disappearances in the area. Meeting locals and asking them for their thoughts on the recent ‘animal attacks’, the film calls to mind similar scenes from the Blair Witch Project, sprinkled with the eccentricities of rural townsfolk who littered Twin Peaks. Jason is soon introduced as a USFS ranger past his prime, sleeping on a sofa surrounded by bottles, still privately grieving the loss of his wife who was killed in one of the aforementioned animal attacks. After some convincing, he’s brought into the investigation, where he joins up with local Sheriff Ken (Jack Vanover). The two men must work through their initial resentment of each other to solve the case, and in doing so, they may reveal secrets that would rock their community if they were to come to light.

Jason and Ken have a reluctant partnership, the two literally at each others’ throats when they first meet at the scene of the crime. While they do learn to work together and lean on each other, Feet of Death seems less interested in the human drama and seems to be more focused on the intrigue of the attacks themselves. Audiences may feel that Jason and Ken move past their antagonism for each other surprisingly quickly, and that the potential in seeing them move past their initial grievances was squandered. Unexpectedly, Jason’s arc revolves around him getting out of his depressive funk and more involved in the investigation, but it once again comes up short. The circumstances around his wife’s death are left mysterious, and there’s no particular lesson for Jason to learn, or obstacle to overcome, to deliver a satisfying conclusion to his story. Jason’s arc is set up pretty heavy-handedly in his first scene during a conversation with his colleague Al (Tim Blough), who tells him straightforwardly that he needs to find his purpose. Of course, solving the case is the purpose of all the primary characters, and while it does have a personal element for Jason since his wife was one of the victims, it never feels like he overcomes a past failing or really makes a consequential decision. The result is a narrative that lacks a real driving force, a reason for the audience to root for Jason to overcome his demons and solve the investigation that has plagued the community.

The film’s score by Ryan Stahl compliments the film appropriately, and it was a particular highlight. There are shades of Disasterpiece’s ambient synth tracks from It Follows, and in more tense sequences, the use of rhythmic thumping in the soundtrack is reminiscent of Ennio Morricone’s score written for The Thing. It’s disappointing that while the music can be praised, the poster for the film appears to have been AI generated, featuring wobbly caricatures of characters who do not appear in the film. I can empathise with smaller productions doing the best they can with limited budgets, but a still from the film would always be preferable to generating a generic, poorly composed image that says nothing about the film.

Feet of Death features some genuinely thrilling moments and an ending which ups the ante in a fun and unexpected way, showing that Chick had more up his sleeve than audiences may have expected. Still, the exciting climax is regrettably not enough to salvage the rest of the film which feels lethargic, meandering awkwardly through the expected motions in the standard police procedural. The characters just aren’t interesting enough here to sustain the runtime, and the crime at the heart of it isn’t sensational or unique enough to draw much curiosity. More factors could have been introduced in the second act to complicate the narrative, and more hurdles should have been placed in the way to impede the characters’ progress towards the conclusion. Feet of Death isn’t the easiest recommendation, but there’s a small town charm that some audiences may glean some enjoyment from.