The first thing you might be wondering is whether you should see the first two Tahoe Joe movies before watching this third one. Although you can definitely follow the plot of Tahoe Joe 3: Concrete Wilderness without having seen the first two, the first two are a lot of fun. They’re playful, yet with a certain verisimilitude that is essential in a found footage movie.
We begin with news coverage. Since the last Tahoe Joe movie, there has been a surge of Bigfoot sightings in the Lake Tahoe area. It does a good job setting the scene, and getting us back into the world, the vibe, you could say, of the universe that directors Dillon Brown and Michael Rock have created. It’s a world where Bigfoot definitely exists, and he’s definitely irritated and angry.
Brown and Rock, as always, play fictional versions of themselves. They began the series as skeptics, but after they were attacked by Joe in the first movie, they’ve become believers. So much so that they’ve set up their own paranormal investigation group called the Joe Bros. In catching us up with what the duo have been doing between parts two and three, we see footage from their investigations. These sequences prove to be some of the scariest in the film, especially one where they confront a modern day dark witch. It doesn’t hurt that the sound design absolutely shakes your speakers, creating as realistic a supernatural attack as I’ve seen in a long time.
Like many three-quels, the stakes are raised quite a bit. This time, the bad guys are the government and the bounty hunters that the government hires to capture Joe. After much blood and gore, they finally get their hands on the creature and take him to a secret laboratory somewhere in Reno, Nevada. But nothing can control our fella Joe, so he escapes and rampages around the city.
Tahoe Joe, as a character, is a cool cryptid. In keeping with some more modern views of the Bigfoot, he’s a character that’s imbued with certain supernatural powers. The first is that he has the power to heal himself, Wolverine-style. This is part of the reason why he’s able to escape the laboratory. They underestimate how much juice it will take to keep him sedated. Also, a nice touch is that electronics don’t work properly when he’s around. This is all in keeping with newer theories about Bigfoot being either an interdimensional extraterrestrial, or some other paranormal being.
Like the other two Joe films, this one has a bunch of guns and a healthy helping of gunfire. Kind of unique for the horror genre, this amount of guns. There’s so much gunfire that it veers into action movie territory at times. But that’s okay, because it all mixes well, creating an ultraviolet world where man is just as terrifying as the Bigfoot. But that’s kind of how it works anyway, right?
The guns and the gunfire are made all that much more visceral by the previously-mentioned excellent sound design. I’m glad I didn’t have the bass turned up on my headphones when I listened to this. It might have rattled my brain a little more than needed. Everything is there. All the squelching and squirting of blood, the screams, the voices that cut in and out because the video is glitching when Tahoe Joe is near. The soundtrack is pretty good, too, except in certain places where music wasn’t needed at all. There’s even a heavy metal Tahoe Joe theme song included.
In Tahoe Joe 3: Concrete Wilderness, Brown and Rock haven’t been as careful as they have in the past about keeping Joe in the shadows. This is probably not a great idea. It’s a nice Bigfoot suit, but it’s clearly a suit, and that becomes most clear in the cold light of video. The creature can be quite scary in short bursts in the dark or in night vision, but the camera often lingers a bit too long.
The acting is good all around, which kind of amazes me. I mean, every now and then an extra is a bit over-the-top, but that’s forgivable. Brown and Rock are known for employing as many first responders and veterans as they can in their films, so to see an army of nonprofessional actors do such a great job is quite impressive.
Tahoe Joe 3: Concrete Wilderness exists in a world kind of like ours, but one that’s also unique unto to itself. The film is comedic, but not a comedy. There are some genuinely scary moments, but others where Brown and Rock lean into the more campy elements. It all shouldn’t work, but it does. It’s a world where, if only for an hour and twenty minutes, you’ll believe that Bigfoot exists.