Finding Sasquatch in Summoning the Spirit

Is there a word for fans of bigfoot movies? There are so many films about everyone's favorite furry cryptid and its various global relatives – whether it be the giant of the Himalayas in Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon or the Fouke Monster in The Legend of Boggy Creek – there are cinematic Sasquatch everywhere.

But while writer/director Jon Garcia set and filmed his addition to the canon, Summoning the Spirit, in the Pacific Northwest, he found his Sasquatch in Texas of all places. Moreover, it'll be a very familiar furry leviathan for the more eagle-eyed cinecryptozoologists in the audience.

"The suit from Exists is the same suit from Summoning the Spirit," Garcia said.

That's Exists as in the 2014 return to found footage by The Blair Witch Project director Eduardo Sanchez, filmed around Austin and in Bastrop County. However, it was actually Exists producer Gregg Hale who put the suit in Garcia's film.

Although Garcia had already made one horror film, 2015's The Hours Till Daylight, Hale had been advising Garcia on the script for Summoning the Spirit. "I've made traditional dramas and LGBT films," Garcia said, "but he's the one that explained to me about creature motivations, and we would talk a lot about story. I'd ask him, 'Hey, find some holes in this story,' and he was just very helpful throughout the whole process."

Yet the looming threat over the production wasn't script issues, but finding a Sasquatch suit. The budget ruled out having one custom-made, Garcia noted, "and I don't know if you've searched the internet for Sasquatch suits, but they are awful."

It was Hale who mentioned that the Exists suit was in storage at FX house Spectral Motion in Los Angeles, "so I dropped by, picked up the suit, took it to Gregg's house," Garcia said. "He was just reliving the Exists days. It was still covered in tree branches and nugs and nags all over it. We had to clean it, but it was in really good shape."

Garcia added that getting a high-quality suit for his microbudget feature was a "game changer," since the Exists costume cost more to fabricate than his entire budget. Even better, the suit still had two full sets of facial applications for close-ups, as well as the full mask for long shots. However, what they lacked was someone to wear it, and that was a real challenge as the suit was custom-made for Exists' monster actor, 6' 7" stuntman Brian Steele. "We were looking for Cinderella," Garcia said. "We're trying to find someone who would act and could move, and was athletic and could move." Fortunately, producer Lacy Todd had a friend the right size, Sean Sisson, "and he just put it on and it fit him, even the teeth."

The suit is where the similarities between the two bigfoot films end. In Exists, the creature becomes a metaphor for endangered species being driven to extinction by careless humanity. However, Summoning the Spirit invokes the supernatural roots of the sasq'ets in the mythology of the Sts'ailes of British Columbia – that it wasn't simply an undiscovered species but a shapeshifting creature with mystical powers. Carla (Krystal Millie Valdes) and Dean (Ernesto Reyes) are caught up in that legend when they fall in with a strange religious cult that believes that its members have a mystical connection to Sasquatch ...

Austin Chronicle: Your version of the Sasquatch leans into the mythological idea of a woodland protector, rather than a hidden species.

Jon Garcia: There are several schools of thought. A lot of people think bigfoot is a primate: eats, sleep, poops, and lives so deep in the forest that we'll never find it. There are places deep in Oregon, a vastness that people never get to. Same thing with the Redwoods: If you go far enough, deep enough in there you'll see a Sasquatch or the remnants of a Sasquatch. And there's all kinds of nut and bolts things, like they like sweets and there's only 800 left in the world.

But I like the metaphysical bigfoot because that led to the spiritual side of things that I was really trying to explore. I'm Latin American, I grew up Catholic, I consider myself very spiritual, and Dean and Carla are very spiritual. They were Catholic: We cut out a scene where they did the sign of the cross – I'm not sure why, we just felt like we wanted this to be more universal.

I wanted to go that route because it led to the magic of what's possible in the forest, and that this thing may be inherently good and what it's doing may be necessary.

AC: Where did the idea for merging the story about a cult and the bigfoot movie together?

JG: It was a bigfoot movie for me the whole time, and the cult was there to serve that. Of course it's a monster movie, and in creature features we show our beast slowly and surely, and there's a big payoff at the end. We do follow that model to a degree, but I wanted to show the creature from the beginning, and that was a conglomeration of ideas and feedback we got, including one from the distributor. "We need more bigfoot. Can you put more bigfoot in there?" Yeah, we have one shot of bigfoot in there, let's add another few. Bigfoot isn't elusive, it just wanders around the forest. We get to see it, and we get to see this beautiful suit the entire time.

AC: And that changes the dynamic of the story. Because the cult doesn't believe in a fictional animal, because there's something there, so it becomes about what they're imposing on Sasquatch.

JG: They're there because they believe in the forest, and they feel they have to protect the forest and the Sasquatch, and the Sasquatch ultimately protects them. Me and [cowriter Zach Carter] were always trying to find ways that the cult would answer to, believe in, and somehow be connected to the Sasquatch [but] there's a corruption of native teachings.

So I was trying to connect these strands. There's the Sasquatch and her story. We have the cult and their story. Then there's Carla and Dean, and what they don't have and need. And ultimately there's this cycle of nature, of why we're all here.

Summoning the Spirit is available now on VOD.