I am admittedly not much of a believer in things that require faith or in things that are supernatural or extraterrestrial.

My personal thoughts on the matter are that I don’t have superpowers, so why should it be fair if, like, Bigfoot or aliens visiting earth exist! Someday, though, I’m sure my latent heat vision or something will kick in, and we can revisit this topic. But for now,  I remain a skeptic on pretty much anything that isn’t weird sports superstitions. Even those I don’t ACTUALLY believe in, but… anything to try to help the Seahawks, man. They usually really need it.

But the point is, when I hear about or watch shows where folks are claiming to be out looking for yetis or alien artifacts or ghosts, they don’t usually do that much for me. Of course if we had proof that something like poltergeists exist, I would hear about it on the news, not on some pre-taped show buried in my cable stations or from a documentary. Of course, depending on how far your belief in conspiracies goes, you may not think that would be the case! So fair enough to you if that is the case.

This all brings us to the new documentary sequel, American Werewolves 2: The Skinwalkers. In this documentary, director Seth Breedlove and his crew travel around various regions of New Mexico, in particular an area called Farmington, and talk to various individuals who claim to have had encounters with Skinwalkers.

Skinwalkers, we are told, are not exactly werewolves, despite the title of this series. They have the ability to take many forms. In addition to dogs or wolves, they can shapeshift into other kinds of animals like elk or sheep. And not only that, but they can take on the forms of various people. Skinwalkers exist possibly as a curse from a shaman or medicine man, but we are also told one can become one by conducting a ritual that involves you killing the person you love the most in the world. The exact origins are not entirely known.

What is known is that the superstition around skinwalkers is so strong that most people in Native American culture don’t even want to talk about them. It is considered a bad omen to do so. But there were a few brave souls willing to talk about their encounters to a documentary film crew, omens be damned if they could get the truth out.

And so for about eighty minutes or so, we get each witness in turn coming on to tell the story of their encounter with a large beast that temporarily stalked them. A lot of these stories sound very similar. The creature is at least seven feet tall. Its fur is dark brown or gray. It drove the witness’ pets nuts.

There is no physical evidence collected of the skinwalkers. No footage of it shifting its shape, no molds of the large footprints we are told about. Just stories from the witnesses. So if you are looking for undeniable proof that changelings exist among us, you won’t find it here. But the tales that each talking head presents can be interesting enough if you are into that sort of thing.

Breedlove intersperses moments of werewolf actors with some basic visual effects editing into each story for some creepy atmosphere, but for me, these bits make the story even harder to swallow. They cheapen the stories we are hearing and make me feel like even the director thinks this is all nonsense, to the point where he is poking fun at it. I’m positive that that is not his intent, but it’s what it reads as to me. I wish these cuts had been left out to just let the witnesses tell their stories.

Ultimately, I can’t really score this documentary on a scale of five or anything. Even more than the basic movie, this is entirely subjective. If cryptids and the like are your thing, you might be interested in what this has to say. If they aren’t–like they aren’t for me–nothing here is going to convince you that you are missing out on anything or wrong in your belief.