‘The Yeti’ Might Star, But His Ferocious Bite Doesn’t Land [Review]
A good monster movie only needs one thing: a good monster. The Yeti, directed and written by Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta in their feature directorial debuts, has one. It’s in the name. Yet, while the Yeti commands title billing, you’d be forgiven for thinking he was merely a day player. The Yeti tries to roar up a storm, but it’s all Gigantopithecus bark, little bite.
A serviceable intro spills enough blood to augur the carnage to come. Deep in the Alaskan wilderness, an oil tycoon and his band of merry adventurers have gone missing on an expedition to ostensibly identify more oil wells. The tycoon’s son, Merriell Sunday Jr. (Eric Nelsen) assembles a ragtag troupe of experts to track the missing group down and bring them home. Along for the ride are Marianne (Heather Lind), a veterinarian, Coates (Linc Hand), a veteran and hired gun, Dynamite Dan (Gene Gallerano), whose name is exactly what it sounds like, Booker (an always welcome Jim Cummings), a radio expert, and Ellie (Brittany Allen), a cartographer and explorer whose own father is among those missing.
They’re reasonably textured, though most commonly (and frustratingly) framed by their trauma as today’s horror is wont to do. Coates is still reeling from the war. Ellie’s mother has died. Booker… well, Booker has it rough. The frost-tipped sincerity is at odds with Gallerano and Pisciotta’s stylistic impulses. The visuals are very Great American Novel, radio announcer voice, bold broadcast font, and all. Intrepid adventurers making their way into the unknown, so on and so forth.
The thematic roots are decidedly less so. They’re modern and maudlin, and John Hunter’s score, while good, is as misplaced as Elmer Bernstein’s score in The Deep End of the Ocean (if you know, you know). There are some chaotic arrangements whenever the titular beast makes an attack, though otherwise, there are mostly a number of slow medleys as the group alternates between monologuing their respective traumas.
Which is not to say sincerity doesn’t have its place. It does, and I’ve long been an advocate for more in this post-irony era. I’m just not sure it blends all that well in a film where a man’s intestines are snaked through a woman’s hands for fifteen seconds. The B-movie sensibilities never align with the elevated impulse to make The Yeti, a movie starring a giant, winter ape, about something.
Those impulses weigh on the actual monster of it all. While the titular Yeti is impressively practical, it’s often off-screen, mounting its carnage shrouded in shadows, teasing the possibility of a full-on monster movie without ever having the bloody guts to be so. The deaths, too, are frequently obscured. There’s plenty of aftermath, though decidedly less showing of what actually happened. Was someone’s arm ripped off? I think so, but we’ll have to wait and see.
The noncommittal vibe extends to other technical and proximal elements as well. While it’s nice that The Yeti gets started pretty quickly, it’s a jarring jump from the assemblage of the team to them already stranded in the middle of the wilderness. It’s never clear where anyone is in relation to one another, how big the woods are, or just how cold it’s supposed to be. The winter storm is set dressing; don’t expect it to impact the plot beyond providing context for why they’re stranded.
It’s not all bad. The Yeti looks handsome enough, and the titular beast really is a wonder. In its best moments, there’s a solid siege movie in here, a la Dog Soldiers– a small-scale chamber piece about monsters picking a group off one by one. The Yeti is never just that, unfortunately, and just as it gets going, it regresses into tired tropes and paint-by-numbers mayhem. Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta have the sauce, but the sheer talent present isn’t enough to thaw out a better movie.
The Yeti will be released in AMC Theaters on April 4th & 8th and on Digital on April 10th.
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The Yeti
Summary
The Yeti’s paint-by-numbers monster mayhem isn’t hot enough to thaw out a B-movie worth its sauce.
Categorized:Reviews Streaming / Home Video