Five friends (Fanny Valette, Johan Libereau, Raphael Lenglet, Maud Wyler, and Nicolas Giraud) climbing the mountains of Croatia find that the climbing trail is closed for repairs. They carry on regardless, which proves their undoing as they end up stranded and being hunted by someone or something nasty.
A lot of people seem to like this film, but I’m not one of them. Also known as “Vertige”, this Abel Ferry horror pic is a French film set in Croatia and filmed in the French Alps (not surprising given it actually looks attractive- apologies to Croatian readers, but y’know…) Weird, huh? But then, so is the film’s English title, if you ask me. Speaking of language, I saw the film in its horribly dubbed version. I think dubbing should be made obsolete. You don’t like subtitles? That’s your problem, not mine. I had issues with the film straight away, though, with the film opening with characters in 2009 listening and singing along to a Supergrass song. From the 90s. I don’t think so.
Anyway, there’s really only a few minor things I liked about this film, excluding lead actress Valette’s ‘alps’. They’re awesome, though, and she’s got a really lovely, warm presence that kept me going, though her inconsistent bravery and resilience is a big issue. She spends much of the film scared and crying, when her friends need her. But then she turns into a kick-butt heroine towards the end? Not likely. The other characters are nondescript, as is seemingly the norm these days.
The violence isn’t overly grotesque but it does look awfully painful and realistic without ever going down the ‘torture porn’ path, thankfully. The scenery is excellent, no doubt about it, but that’s during the scenes where absolutely nothing happens. The film spends much of its length doing absolutely nothing and doing it really slowly. I mean, for a film about hiking in the mountains, it’s gobsmacking to find that we don’t get the requisite cable-breaking scene until about 20 minutes in (At least “Cliffhanger” delivered it in the opening five minutes!). Even then, it’s not until after 35 odd minutes that anything else happens. That’s 35 minutes of practically nothing going on, and about 30 minutes too long at that. When it does go somewhere, it ends up being a rip-off of “The Descent” and “Hostel”. It’s better than the latter, much worse than the former. Oh, and the villain is straight out of “Wrong Turn”, another fine horror film this one rips off. The screenplay is by Johanne Bernard and Louis-Paul Desanges, who prove that they sure do watch a lot of movies, even if they don’t seem to learn much of practical use from them.
The film isn’t incompetently made, it’s just entirely dull and unoriginal. I’ve been asking for so long now if it’s too much to ask for interesting characters in a horror movie, that I really should just assume that it IS asking too much. But with no characters to care about, how can I find tension and interest in their predicament? This is slow, bland, and unmemorable, if not entirely incompetent.
OVERALL SUMMARY
A glacial-paced horror film with lots of mountain climbing, uninteresting characters, and unoriginal plotting. Life’s too short to waste it on bland films like this. Watch “The Descent” again, instead.