Monday, October 12, 2020

Mountains of Madness

We saw a preview for Devil's Pass (2013), and Ms. Spenser said that she loves Arctic horror - or in this case, Ural mountain horror. So we queued it up for Horrorween.

It's set up as a documentary about an incident (real-life) where several Russian climbers died at a pass in the Ural mountains. Or maybe it's found footage, from the attempt to make a documentary. Anyway, a group of college kids are studying the "Dyatlov Pass" incident, and decide to go to Russia and make a documentary about it. They have the leaders, male and female, sexy sound girl (chosen by smarmy leader for her looks), and two student climbers, who had summited all over the US and the rest of the world. After a few treks in snowshoes, they are ready for Russia. 

Actually, you get the feeling they are totally NOT ready for Russia, and it will kill them. And you might be ok with that.

They get to Russia, and look for the surviving member of the original party, who was committed to an asylum. The guards don't let them in - they never bothered to like make an appointment - and tell them the guy is dead. But they see someone holding a sign up in the window. Too bad they don't read Cyrillic.

And so on. They get to the mountain, and surprisingly, that's not what gets them killed. In fact they make it to the pass days early, for some weird reason. Also, all of their navigational equipment is going haywire. Then they find a door into the mountain. It locks from the outside, but it isn't locked just frozen shut. Then the government shows up and starts shooting at them.

There is a real body count, and the dead are not necessarily who you are hoping for. There is an explanation for the mystery (and the new mysteries), but I don't know how important it is. The found footage part sees less and less important as the movie goes on. I don't know why director Renny Harlin bothered with it. I guess it kept costs down.

Still, this was a good basic horror in the snow, with pleasantly unlikable characters and a gory last act. We had no complaints.

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