THE YETI

Stars: Brittany Allen, Heather Lind, Corbin Bernsen, William Sadler, Jim Cummings, Eric Nelsen, Christina Bennett Lind, Linc hand, Johnathan Brownlee, Elizabeth Cappuccino and Gene Gallerano.
Writers/Directors: Gene Gallerano, William Pisciotta.

RATING: ⭐️⭐️⭐️½ 

Directors Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta indulge both their love of cryptid-creature features and Steven Spielberg films with THE YETI, a surprisingly serious-minded affair that is just at home playing in the dark recesses of its character’s psyche as it is in the chilly woods of the Alaskan Territory, circa 1947.

The very first frames of the film evoke the opening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when lights emerge from a raging sandstorm. Gallerano and Pisciotta climatically invert the scene, introducing their film through the roar of a woodland snowstorm, but the message is clear - we are in the grasp of two filmmakers who love the thrill that crowd-pleasing cinema has to offer. The ensuing prologue is a messy affair, showing the horrible impact our titular monster can have while never showing the beast (you know, like in Jaws…). 

They triple-down on the Spielbergian influences with the introduction of heroine Ellie Bannister (the terrific Brittany Allen, hot of her multi-episode arc in The Pitt). A cartographer (or, in the words of Bob Balaban, “I’m a mapmaker”), she is convinced to join a search deep into the wilderness for a missing expedition that contained oil magnate Merriell Sunday Sr. (Corbin Bernsen) in a sequence echoing that scene between Denholm Elliott and Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Ellie and her adventurer dad (character actor legend William Sadler, also in the lost group) have been long estranged, a further link, this time thematically, to the Spielberg grab-bag.

Ellie is joined in Alaska by experts in their fields, whose skills may combine to locate the lost group but who are always more likely to butt heads. They include radio-tech guy Booker (Jim Cummings, already a survivor of cryptid chaos in The Wolf of Snow Hollow), World War Both veteran Coates (Linc Hand), whose scarred face is half-hidden by a grotesquely painted mask; capitalist scumbag Merriell Sunday Jr. (Eric Nelsen); a doctor named Parker (Elizabeth Cappuccino); animal expert Lamb (Christina Bennett Lind); and, in a part that gets as close to comic relief as the film allows itself, co-director Gallerano himself as explosives expert ‘Dynamite’ Dan.

At this point of the movie (and this review), one may feel the urge to paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park and ask, “Ah, there is going to be a Yeti in your Yeti movie?” But Gallerano and Pisciotta are clearly respectful of cryptid lore, instead preferring to drop references to Bigfoot lore into their thriller rather than just unleash their monster. When our Yeti first appears to torment the rescue party, a bright beam of light appears; are the giant apes of North America multi-dimensional travellers who move through portals, as some theorists argue? Do tribes of Yetis communicate through tree-knocking, as heard in the film? And do they exist as family units, conjecture that is central to the narrative here?

It’s a monster movie above all else, even if the script wants to offer up stronger character beats than this sort of B-premise usually affords its audience (some of whom may grow impatient with the fireside chatter). Rest assured, the practical effects creature work and the glee with which the film offers up fleeting but fearsome bursts of gore will delight anyone buying a ticket to a movie called The Yeti.

And I think Steven Spielberg would dig it.