By Stephanie Scaife
Yawn… yup, you’ve guessed it, here we have yet another straight to DVD found footage horror film. This alone should be good enough reason to avoid The Dyatlov Pass Incident (or Devil’s Pass, as it is now known) but for my sins, I’ve sat through it and can confirm that there are in fact many reasons you may want to give it a miss. There may be a sense of curiosity given that it’s directed by Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, Deep Blue Sea etc.) and after the pleasant surprise of Barry Levinson’s The Bay last year it may, for a fleeting second, have seemed like there was still some steam left in this tiresome and tedious sub-genre. But don’t be fooled, this is strictly by the numbers stuff.
Perhaps the most intriguing and also frustrating thing about this film is the fact that it’s based around a real life incident that in itself is pretty fascinating. In 1959, nine experienced hikers mysteriously died on a ski trek trip in the Ural Mountains of Russia. Despite evidence that the hikers had left their tents barefoot in freezing conditions and had been found dead (two with fractured skulls, two with broken ribs and one even missing her tongue) there were no signs of any struggle. Authorities determined, tantalisingly, that this had been due to “a compelling natural force”. Needless to say the story has sparked much interest over the years and spawned various conspiracy theories. You’d think that such a story would lend itself well to being adapted into a film, but Harlin seems to have decided not to opt for just one conspiracy theory, but ALL OF THE CONSPIRACY THEORIES. There’s talk of the USS Eldridge and the Philadelphia Experiment, secret underground nuclear testing, time travel, aliens, yetis and more! The original story with all its ambiguities is actually pretty creepy, so it’s a real shame that the film really isn’t, at all. It’s also painfully familiar and similarities to The Blair Witch Project are almost embarrassing in their frequency, more so than almost any other found footage film I’ve had the misfortune to see.
As for the plot, The Dyatlov Pass Incident is about five college students, Holly (Holly Goss) a psychology major, and Jensen (Matt Stokoe) a documentary filmmaker who along with some fellow students enlisted due to their supposed mountain climbing expertise embark on a trip to retrace the steps of the original lost hikers in a bid to solve the mystery surrounding their deaths. They’re each supposed to be all-American co-eds but the cast is made up primarily of little known British TV actors, who at times struggle with the accents, but do their best with what little they’re given. The film for the most part looks pretty good, due to being filmed on location in Russi,a and it foregoes shaky handheld footage (for the first two thirds of the film at least) with the fact that the characters are filmmakers at least partially explaining why everything is so well shot. One of my main issues with the film, however, was how indistinguishable the characters were and how little I cared about what they were doing, why they were doing it and what ultimately happened to them. Especially towards the end of the film, when things take a turn for the worse and there’s a lot of screeching, running around, bad CGI and nauseating hand-held camerawork. The ending itself resulted in an audible groan from myself and from various other audience members, so I’m assuming it was supposed to be a twist, but by that point frankly I just didn’t care.
Admittedly this really isn’t my sort of thing so it could be that I’m being overly harsh as many of the other reviews I’ve seen haven’t been quite so scathing, but I found this film to be contrived, entirely un-scary and ultimately pretty forgettable.
The Dyatlov Pass Incident is screening at FrightFest on 23 August and is released on DVD and Blu-ray by Anchor Bay UK on 26 August.