Review of Everest (2015) by Jenna I — 06 Feb 2018

This movie just made me kinda sad. It's people chasing dreams, mostly making it, celebrating their accomplishments, and then dying in some of the most horrific ways possible.

I'm quite convinced that at a certain level of both money and accomplishment you basically hit a wall and need to create or buy your own drama in order to keep your life worthwhile. So there's definitely a degree of "why the fuck would you do this if you're a surgeon and your entire life depends on your hands oh look now you have frost bite on both hands wow that was idiotic." But at the same time on a human level I can understand the appeal of the challenge of it, and the I found the movie to be quite moving as far as the scene of everybody celebrating at the top. It's a shame life isn't like a video game and once you 'beat the game' you don't get to just slide down a fireman's poll back into reality or something.

This was shot strangely - it's half beautiful on-location (CGIed together) scenes, and half really obviously fake studio shots. It's also hard to focus on any of the individuals as far as rooting or really deeply caring about them. For one there isn't the space or time in this film, and second its hard to tell everybody apart in the hiking gear. I kept thinking "where are their face masks?" but a friend I was watching with pointed out that when you pay that much money to get specific actors you're gonna show their faces, hahaha.

The death scenes are really nauseatingly terrifying though. The concept of just being so out of it you trip and fall to your death is literally a nightmare. Dying from somebody else's mistake and/or being frozen to death are also about equally disturbing. So three stars because while this wasn't the greatest movie, it definitely hit me emotionally.