Rating: B-
Dir: Seth Breedlove
Star: Mark Matzke, Joseph Citro, Robert Singley, Nick Willard
The Bennington Triangle is an area, deep in rural Vermont, roughly centred on Glastenbury Mountain and the ghost settlement of Glastenbury. This was previously a logging town, and after they ran out of trees, a brief effort was made to make it a tourist resort. But it was unincorporated in 1937. That’s around the time the weirdness started, with the death in 1943 of hunter Carol Herrick, whose body was discovered, apparently squeezed to death. Then there were a rash of disappearances in the years just after the end of World War II, and subsequently unexplained earth level lights, odd stone cairns, ghostly encounters, and a cryptid called the ‘Bennington Monster’.
This documentary, narrated by Matzke, covers all of the above and some even more esoteric legends, like a boulder that eats people. That one is fairly quickly disposed of, and in the main, this is quite down-to-earth in its recounting of the various incidents. The main source of information is Citro, the man who coined the ‘Bennington Triangle’ term during a radio interview. He was inspired by other areas with similar reputations, like the Bermuda Triangle, and the Bridgewater Triangle in Massachusetts. Mind you, Citro is a professional story-teller, with a whole slew of books with titles like The Vermont Monster Guide. Nothing against him, but I’m always a little sceptical of people with a vested financial interest in perpetuating mythology.
At one point Matzke calls the Triangle, “A place where fact and fiction twist together until one is indistinguishable from the other,” and that’s perhaps the attitude to bear in mind here. Still, there’s enough here to make for an entertaining watch, regardless of your position on the events. If you’re not a believer, you can enjoy this simply as a collection of spooky stories. The tale told by Singley, for example, where it seems he may have come perilously close to being added to the list of disappearances on the mountain. He certainly seems a credible witness. But, as with so many of the stories told here, there is little in the way of supporting evidence, beyond the experience as described.
As a result, this is not likely to change anybody’s mind, and it is fair to call this almost completely anecdotal, and perhaps a case of quantity over quality too. At least, if you are looking for more than entertainment: from that perspective, I can almost hear the crackling of the camp fire, and taste the S’mores. I might have gone a little deeper into some areas, and skipped the stuff which is less specific to the area, like the ghost stories. Wasn’t a fan of the cannibalistic boulder either: it’s just too far out there, and I felt it devalued the less wild elements. But as someone open-minded enough to entertain some of the possibilities, this made for an enjoyable and thought-provoking travelogue.
[The film is available now on digital platforms, and on DVD through Small Town Monsters]