Yétis : Terreur en montagne

A sister sets out to rescue her missing brother with the help of a group of her solider friends on leave.

Yes, the world needs serious Yeti creature features and one about a rescue for a brother who revenge on a beast which killed his dad is a good idea on paper but the CGI let it down from the outset.

Directed by Marko Mäkilaakso and written by Nathan Atkins Abominable Snowman, a.k.a Yeti and Deadly Decscent is a good concept but underdeveloped and poorly executed. There is a budget but Syfy producers and editors appear to rarely, if ever deliver.

Abominable Snowman does benefit from Atkins serious story and tone but sadly it never breaks the made for TV production value or script which makes it unintentionally comedic at times.

Out of the snow there is hope as the design of the creature works, the scenery is breath taking, there's also some nice skiing, snowboarding and Elizabeth Croft as Stacey is notable.

This is one of the passable better ones but how many good made for television Yeti films are there?

The opening sequence of this SyFy production confused me . With a title involving both Abominable and Snowman in the title I was fully expecting the action to take place somewhere in the Himalayas only to notice that the location didn't really look like the Himalayas . Not necessarily a criticism because how many science fiction films have you seen supposedly set on another planet often resemble Earth , especially a strip of land in California if it's a Hollywood movie or a sand pit in Surrey if it's a British television show . As it transpires the setting is indeed North America which leads me to think why is it known by another title when DEADLY DESCENT would be the more fitting name for the film ?

Being a Syfy production you know what to expect and just to drive the point home it stars Adrian Paul so you really know what to expect - not much . It does contain all the flaws of the Syfy channel , one of Hollywood blockbuster standards and the budget of a TVM . This probably explains the oft quoted criticism on this page that the monsters are achieved via some very poor CGI that never convinces and one wonders if the producers could have just gone for men dressed up as monsters

The story plays out as you'd probably expect with a team of people trekking out to a remote wilderness miles away from any potential help then suddenly realising they are being stalked by a danger that is not human . That said DEADLY DESCENT tries to stop being entirely predictable and is slightly more bleak and nihilistic than you'd probably expect and if it wasn't for the poor CGI might have been held in better regard on this page

Worse than the stuck-on-a-chairlift movie "Frozen" and only slightly better than the movie "Avalanche Sharks".

Fourth-rate acting, ridiculous script on so many different levels and completely unrealistic from a lifelong skier's point of view. Everything from the set, the premise, plot, storyline, dialog, acting, avalanche scene and assumptions and everything is as utterly-stupid as "Wild Hogs" is for motorcyclists.

Clearly the folks who wrote the script never skied a single day in their lives. No scene would play out in real life like it did in the movie, all scenes were contrived, cheesy and completely manufactured by amateurs from a bunny-slope cartoonish perspective. Even if you took away the snow monster piece, which is in a class by itself - everything about this movie is wrong, irreverent and unrealistic on every known level. You don't try to "outrun" and avalanche - you ski a 45 degree angle traverse! Duh! And if a party is caught in an avalanche - there are not these neatly-piled little mounds covering skiers who magically stick their arms upwards through the snow. If you are buried in an avalanche, there is not light in there - it is pitch black.

Skiers do not interact on any mountain like this - this is a movie for people who have never skied a day in their life and do not know any better. I could pretend to know a lot about Arctic Fishing and write a story about offshore fisherman who bought their equipment at the local Wal-mart too. Or who went fishing from jet skis in near the Aleutian Islands. But anyone who knows fishing more than me (which is almost anyone) would be insulted if I made a movie about fishing.

That is what I am talking about. If you do not know the subject matter and cannot appreciate the sport of skiing and boarding - then do not pretend to and try to make a movie about it. Go back to your ski park with your photo ops on your 5-day yuppie vacation at Vail where you belong - but it certainly is not in the backcountry - because you have no business being there or making a movie about it either. Go home and play video games, but stay out of the snow unless you actually have something that resembles a clue.

If you are going to make a movie about skiing, then consult people who really ski next time. I am not talking about yuppies wanna-bees who ski blue groomers on their "Griswold family ski vacation". I am talking about backcountry skiers, people who heli-ski or serve as a heli-guide, people who know how to use a beacon, probe and shovel and ski 50+ days per year - like me.

Do not waste five minutes on this movie - because you will never get those five minutes that you wasted ever back in you life. This movie portrays an artificial alternate reality about skiing - which has no basis in real life but only makes a mockery of the sport.

SyFy's movies are often terrible, though there are some tolerable ones out there. Abominable Snowman(aka Deadly Descent) is down there with their bad movies. The good news is that it is a long way from SyFy's worst, and it is certainly better than last year's Bigfoot. And there are a few decent things. Nicholas Boulton's performance is dramatically stern and intense which is in good keep with this type of genre. The reveal of the second creature was very effective also, and Zara Dimitrova is smoking hot. Sadly, that's pretty much it. The acting has been much worse with SyFy, but there is still the mix of blandness and over-compensating. If you're looking for Atanas Srebrev to elevate it, you'll be disappointed, he's only in one scene and that one scene completely wastes him. It is not the actors' fault though that their performances generally don't register. They also have to work with characters that do little more than bore and irritate you and dialogue that just doesn't flow and that is unintentionally funny. The story doesn't engage either, while it picks up a tad in the latter half it is slow-moving and has very little atmosphere. Any comedy is awkward and out of place, the scary elements are diluted by the lack of suspense and that we don't see a lot of the deaths(which weren't that inventive in the first place) and the drama is soppy and lacks any kind of passion. Visually, there's been worse, but the creatures look blurry and quite weird-looking and the editing lacks any kind of fluidity. In conclusion, poorly done but there's worse out there. 3/10 Bethany Cox

In spite of what some say I don't think the core premise behind this film is a bad one.

Acting wise its not awful either and the story whilst basic, holds up well enough, setting the scene for big foot scares and action.

Where is falls down badly and really undermines everything else it tries to achieve, is in the special effects department. CGI is just bad. From the cheesy, poorly rendered big foot, that looks like a giant, rabid, hamster, to the awful, shiny plastic, helicopter effects.

If some extra thought and cash had been invested into how the creature's look and act plus other special effects, this could have worked quite well as an entertaining B-grader.

Sadly that's not the case, with the only "Deadly Descent", being one of farce.

3/10.