Yétis : Terreur en montagne

Abominable Snowman (2012)

* (out of 4)

If you're expecting SyFy to make good on last year's horrible BIGFOOT then you're sadly going to be disappointed. A group of professional snowboarders and skiers take to the mountains to look for a couple missing friends but soon they run into the title characters. ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN is yet another horrid bigfoot/yeti/snowman movie and it's a real shame. I love the actually myth of the creature but it's just mind-blowing that so many of the films have been downright awful. I'll start with the good right up front. The performances here were actually much better than you typically see in a film like this. Now for the bad stuff. We'll start with the actual monsters, which are among the worst you're ever going to see. Last year's BIGFOOT turned the creature into an awful looking Godzilla-sized monster. This film here makes them look like something a cat would cough up in the middle of the night. The actual look of the creatures are perhaps the worst I've ever seen. We can start with the fact that they're never the same size as in one scene they'll be the size of a car and then the next scene they're bigger than a large tree. Their size changes throughout but their hairy look and design make them look like a bear. In fact, my three-year-old son came out of his room while I was watching this and called them a bear. Even worse is that the awful CGI has a blurry look to them and it's just so bad that you have to wonder who signed off on them saying they'd be okay for a movie. The story is all rather predictable but with the lack of comedy, scares or drama, the thing just feels slow and boring. Lets all hope that one day the genre gets these monsters right but at this point lets hope no more turn up on SyFy.

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.

Bottom-of-the-barrel entertainment, brought to us by the SyFy Channel. I sometimes wonder whether they churn these films out on autopilot as I could have sworn I'd seen this before, even though I hadn't. The IMDb trivia page announces that this was shot in Bulgaria in 13 days, so you get an idea of the kind of quality on offer here.

I'll briefly list what to expect, anyway: sloppily written characters you don't care about, going-through-the-motions acting, a distinct lack of imagination on the part of both director and scriptwriter. My favourite scene was where once character announced that she had suddenly remembered that the location she was in was the same place her father died all those years ago...bad memory, huh? Inevitably, what makes DEADLY DESCENT a laughing stock of a film is the excruciatingly awful CGI used to animate the Abominable Snowmen. It's worse than an old PC game I used to play in the 1990s called NIGHTMARE CREATURES! There are also way too many silly skiing sequences to pad out the running time, hardly any gore, and one of the most rubbishy-looking explosions I've seen in a while. Another SyFy howler, then.

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?

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.