Yeti

Rating NR Formats DVD Genre horror Starring Carly Pope, Mark Menard, Peter DeLuise, Crystal Lowe Directed by Paul Ziller Publisher Grodfilm

Legends and myths have always been a subject of interest in horror movies because the idea that such tales of terror might actually be true adds an additional scare factor to the film, as with the recent DVD release of Yeti.

The storyline follows a college football team after their airplane crashes in the snowy, remote mountain region of the Himalayas. As the 20 some-things battle the cold, injuries, and finding a food source some of the dead from the plane crash begin to disappear with only massive tracks and bloody drag marks left behind. They slowly begin to realize that they are not alone in the mountains, but something impossible to believe lurks in the rocky caves.

As I sat down to watch Yeti I was optimistic, after all it wasn’t rated and maybe that meant it was going to be so scary that they couldn’t even put a rating on it. I was very wrong to think that. This movie is not rated because it is not scary. It also appears that while filming the actors would use cuss words to express distress, but the editors dubbed in silly cover-ups instead like “Gosh darn it!” and “Someone’s been taking the frozen bodies!” It was like watching one of the older Godzilla movies where the people’s lips are still moving after they’re done speaking. This movie also holds no suspense because one minute the audience is watching the students whine and complain and then we jump to a shot of the yeti growling on top of a mountain. It seems totally coincidental that there is even a yeti in this film most of the time.   

Yeti, is one of those horror movies that belongs to the days when the special effects team used sticky cough syrup and red dye to make impossibly bright red blood, and the yeti itself was merely a rubber and hair costume with someone wearing it. Also the computer-generated special effects were so drastically obvious it was painful to watch. I could total see the switch from a man in a yeti suit starting to run to a completely computer animated yeti choppily running after the students. Also out of no where halfway through this painful film the yeti was able to jump great distances somehow, although it looked more like it had taken flight, and again these “jumping” sequences where obviously computer animated.

The acting also wasn’t enjoyable. I didn’t believe the actors when I was watching them. The characters themselves were a rather odd bunch, and somehow the director worked a love connection in amongst the terribly fake body parts and monsters. The truly scary thing about the whole movie was the fact that after five days of being stranded in the hills, the students actually consider and go through with eating one of the dead bodies, but be relieved because you don’t see them actually cut up the person and the chunks that you do see reminded me of blocks of cookie dough like stuff, very square and skin colored, not jagged or bloody like one would suspect.

The only redeeming quality that Yeti possesses is the fact that it’s not really a horror movie at all, but a comedy. I found myself literally laughing openly at several of the scenes do to the fact that the yeti is assaulted by numerous types of defenses including guns and spears, but it is the falling off a cliff that does the poor thing in, and also just the acting itself as well as the script is so predictable. I recommend this movie only if you’re having a special movie night where you want to watch a bunch of the worst movies just for a laugh. The truly sad thing about Yeti is that at the end it leads the audience to believe that there will be a sequel.