Everest is the what you get when you ask yourself, “What if the shark from Jaws was a mountain?” Why the hell you would be asking yourself that, I have no idea, but still it is. The film’s opening has a foreboding shot of the mountain, and you kind of just know that this isn’t going to be a happy movie. That it would be so scary, and upsetting, I didn’t expect. I watch horror films all the time, and Everest gave me the type of feelings I wish I got from horror movies. I wanted to cry. Yeah it’s just about that disturbing. And just like any good horror movie, it hasn’t got the best characters. Well, technically if the characters were bad then I couldn’t say that the film is as effective as it is. If we didn’t care it wouldn’t be scary. But it’s terrifying, so that for all I’m about to say, the characters are built up enough. They just aren’t built up well. This is a film about the 1996 Adventure Consultants Everest Disaster that killed 8 climbers, and injured quite a few more. That means that a lot of characters have to get set up in a short amount of time, and that the audience has to care enough by the time that people start to die. And I did, but the way that characters were established was pretty messy. There’s no real established tone at the beginning of the film, and that leads to characters just spending the entire time throwing around exposition, and describing themselves. This fare better for some, like Jason Clarke’s Rob Hall, who get’s a lot of screentime mainly because that’s where the film’s emotional punch comes from, but worse for others (Jake Gyllenhaal as Scott Fischer whose entire arch is really flimsy). There’s a sense of the group still, but not a sense of individuals… yet. That comes in a little bit later. The audience is never really given a chance to connect with these people in the first 30 minutes of the film, and that’s a pretty large problem. It’s a good thing that an early sense of dread pervades these few minutes, giving the film the needed weight during this section. And then all hell breaks loose. In the interest of not spoiling the entire film, I will not reveal the specifics of how or why it all goes to hell, but it does. However, I will say the following sequences have a lot to do with the individual which is certainly helpful in allowing the audience connect with them more. This is also the section of the film where everything gets really freaking scary. There’s a sense of hopelessness combined with spectacle to the final parts of this film that I haven’t felt in a film since Titanic, and the film is smart enough to play its scary moments quietly rather than full of jump scares. It allows things to play out, quietly soaking horror from the quiet scenes, and small details of body horror. It’s more brutal, and hard hitting this way, and I left the theatre a wreck. It helps the characters become more personable too. I’m glad that that direction was up to par in these scenes, and basically everywhere else. This film has beautiful cinematography, and even though I didn’t see it in IMAX, I kind of wish I had; it's a big screen spectacle of a horror show that deserves to be seen. The characters are not quite up to par, but the rest is all great. I give Everest an 8 out of 10.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archive
December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |