Black Mountain Side

I found a reference to the indie horror movie:

Black Mountain Side (2014),

and decided to watch it. Beware of spoilers this time around! I racked my brain to find a way to avoid spoilers but to no avail. I won't spoil the ending though, so don't worry about that.

This is the synopsis on IMDB: At a cold, desolate, north-most outpost in Canada, an archaeological discovery is made. A specialist arrives Nov. 1. Strange things happen. All contact with the outside world is down.

So our story takes place far in the north of Canada where a team has uncovered what seems to be a part of a structure of Mesoamerican origin. In fact it is in the style of Mesoamerica but considerably older. A find like this in a place like that is of course a big deal. This is why Professor Olsen flies up to the camp to validate their findings and possibly secure more funding.

Things go bad quickly. The native workers vanish in the night, and the archaeologists start getting sick and insane. The plot presents us with two alternative reasons;

1. A bacteria/virus that has been frozen since the ice age has been uncovered together with what they call “the temple”, and is responsible for causing mutation, madness and other problems.

2. They have freed or angered a bipedal deer god who wants them dead for some unexplained reason.

The problem with alternative one is that as the synopsis says contact with the world is down. Not only is the radio unable to establish contact, but the regular supply drop doesn't come, and a virus can't cause that. I suppose the supply drop could be delayed but in that case it is delayed by a month, stranding the people in up to -50C temperatures with no supplies, for no good reason.

This leaves the silly deer god, and that story has some bad plot holes as well.

Black Mountain Side is written and directed by Nick Szostakiwskyj, and it his second full movie as a director, and not be mean, but it shows. The actors come across somewhere between wooden and okay, and the dialogue is also quite hit and miss.

The actual horror parts are pretty good, but are let down by the surrounding parts and they are what's necessary to sell the horror to the audience.

The movie is low budget, but that is no excuse. I have seen low budget before that works smart within the boundaries set by the finances. Outpost (2008) is a good example of such a movie.

A couple of examples this movie does wrong includes calling a flat, table sized rock, a temple. Call it an altar, hint that it could be like the Aztec pyramids and that the altar is only the top of a pyramid. Of course they couldn't afford to build a temple, but the script has to reflect what you show.

Likewise they mention several times how cold it gets at night, but their breath is barely visible. I've been in only -20C many times and the film location was nowhere near that cold. -20C is more than dangerous enough if you are trapped outside all night. No need to over dramatize with -50.

Another couple of things I noted were that the cabins they live in apparently have the ability to do carbon dating and their med station is capable of blood analysis, autopsies as well as biopsies. You never see any of this gear though. Seem silly again.

Many have compared this movie to Carpenter's The Thing as well as some of Lovecraft's works. I can see why the comparisons are made, but I don't fully agree. The Thing might have been an inspiration, but there are no real similarities beyond the cold and the isolation. Likewise, beyond the “Deer God” there is nothing Lovecraftian about it. The gods in Lovecraft's stories really don't care about humans very much, at least not on a personal level as depicted in this movie.

Now that I have ranted on about all the things the movie does wrong, why even mention it when I don't like to write negative reviews? Because this movie has heart and promise. The core of the story is actually pretty good, but the pacing and execution is off. A good rewrite of the script might have elevated it to a much greater height and it wasn't panned on release, far from it. The scenery is great, being shot on location, and overall, somehow this movie was interesting! For it's sins, I actually like it.

So, do I recommend this movie? If you are a horror enthusiast or like the synopsis, then yes by all means. Otherwise no, watch something else.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!