Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0896585/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeti_%28film%29
Directed by Paul Ziller
Staring Marc Menard,
Carly Pope,
Peter DeLuise
Country: Canada, USA
Oh Where to start.
First I gotta start watching these Sci Fi channel movies on the television rather then having the embarrassment to have watched this via video.
We open with an explorer (of sorts) looking for the Yeti in the Himalayas, though judging from the foliage it's obviously Vancouver. He manages to pin it down in it's layer and his gun proves to be completely unreliable when it freezes over. Cue Credits.
The main story occurs in “Present Day” where a group of college football players are traveling via plane to Japan for the first “Pro Bowl” played in that country. What Bowl is this... who cares... the "Yoshi-Island Bowl"?.
Also why are they flying over the Himalayans rather then the Pacific ocean?
Most stop brain from thinking.
We get just enough introduction to realize the characters are annoying shits, who we can't wait to see get eaten by the Yeti.
Of course that could be a bonus for this kind of a movie. The plane crashes in all it's Sci-fi channel CGI glory. So there are a few survivors and rather then gathering around the flaming debris to keep warm they stand around in the middle of the cold, not covering their heads with their hoods, and start bickering. They bicker about how their cold, they bicker about how who's on charge, they bicker about how they have to go back in the wreckage to look for matches (probably stepping over some flaming wreckage to get there)... this doesn't help the stereotype that football players aren't the smartest people in the world.
So rather then make a shelter from all the Canadian pine trees around them, or the tons of debris they spend 2/3rds of the movie bickering and whining (as already stated) about everything. A good source of bickering comes later in the film when they start to bicker about how they are low on matches. I guess it never occurs to them that more wood, actually a constant amount of a wood, could be added to the fire. This would keep the fire going for 24 hours and also.... urghhh most stop brain.
Then they bicker some more when it comes more and more apparent that they may have to eat the bodies of their friends. Luckily the movie takes a moral twist when one of the characters burns all the bodies for the greater good – condemning them to starve to death.
This little bit of moral message on cannibalism is made completely pointless when you have already seen earlier in the film that our leader and his romance interest has already caught and killed a rabbit (which they call a rodent for some reason). This means there's rabbits out there. Why don't they go hunt some more? Was there only one rabbit in the whole Himalaya's? How is it that with that one death they have caused a mass extinction that left only them and some Yetis alive?
I gotta stop thinking.
There's also two (what also turns out to be pointless) subplots.
Two of the young adults/teens travel off to find the radio located on the tail of the wreckage and stumble on the Yeti's layer. One gets torn to shreds and the other breaks his leg. He then has to use his dead friend's severed arm to make a sling and escape the layer. Didn't know that was possible.
This is all so he could stumble around in the snow for a few scenes only to get immediately shot in the face by his friend – making that whole sequence pointless.
The other subplot is two rangers, once American (?) and one Russian ? (can't place the accent), who apparently work in the Himalayas and sent out to find the survivors. Apparently they have binoculars which are super powerful cause it takes them days to travel from the point where they see the survivors in the binoculars and they could meet up with our cast. Unless they were just walking 10 meters a day. But who care's anyways?
There's on important thing anyways. The Yeti. He's a guy a suit, who occasionally turns into bad CGI model and hopes around like a little kid playing hop-scotch. He's cheesy, but he's fun. Unfortunately he takes too long to get involved in the story and by that time there has been too much WTF's to care.
It picks up for a bit at the climax when one guy gets his leg turn off then beaten down with his own leg.
Buuuuuut the end is so.... ugh. Nothing like a like a little romance to cheer everyone up after a deadly plane crash, cannibalism and Yeti attack.
I guess the best you could say is that everyone is trying their hardest and theres a strong cast here led by Carley Pope, but others like Crystal Lowe and Peter Deluise are completely underused, dare I write... pointless.
No one sinks this film, it just wasn't built with buoyant materials to begin with.
