Review: Rage of the Yeti

David Chokachi and Matthew Kevin Anderson are cocky treasure hunters hired by douchy millionaire philanthropist David Hewlett to look for a prized ancient text somewhere in the Arctic. When they arrive, they are beset by nasty Yetis. Yes, Yetis. They must work with a research team stationed there (headed by Yancy Butler) if they are to stay alive and kill these horrible beasties. Oh, but Hewlett sends word that he wants one of the buggers alive. Y’know, just ‘coz he can. But- and here’s the shocker of all shockers- the Yetis don’t much like being captured, so they kinda put up a bit of resistance. Deadly resistance.

Every now and then, the SyFy channel make a film that doesn’t suck. “Arctic Predator” was one, and so is this 2011 flick from director/co-star David Hewlett (a “Stargate: Atlantis” alum), and writers Brooks Peck and Craig Engler. It’s stupid and the FX are frankly appalling (look at the fake backgrounds for most of Hewlett’s scenes!), but it’s a competent yarn and most of the acting is light-years above the norm for SyFy.

I’m not sure where Yancy Butler has been since 1993’s “Hard Target”, but she’s held up pretty well over the years, and she and former “Baywatch” dude David Chokachi are far from the worst ‘stars’ out there. I mean, at least Chokachi isn’t as bad an actor as David Hasselhoff or Kelly Slater, right? Hewlett, meanwhile, steals his own film with a wonderfully douchy performance. Some of the Russian (or Romanian? Bulgarian? French-Canadian perhaps?) actors in supporting roles, meanwhile, are better at hiding their accents than others.

If they hadn’t modelled the FX on the Abominable Snowman from “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (except it appears to have a sphincter for a mouth) this might’ve been something. And why did they make the Yeti look like an abominable snowman? It’s supposed to basically be Bigfoot or a Yowie, which isn’t quite the same. Anyway, it looks so unbelievably fake amidst the very real scenery that it ends up looking like stock footage of a CGI creature! With good CGI, things would look seamless, especially if your actors are familiar with acting in CGI-geared films. But this is as far from seamless as you can get outside of an Edward D. Wood Jr. film.

 

It’s a pretty gory film, and I particularly enjoyed one head splat moment. That was nice. The weird thing is though, that the blood looked like practical FX, whilst the creature is CGI. Huh? Just goes to show that if you don’t have the right budget for good CGI, practical FX are the way to go. I also have to say that the film looks really nice. Most snowbound films tend to look a bit ugly in night scenes, but this film thankfully doesn’t have too many of those (though some of it is clearly green screen, too).

 

Overall, this is competent stuff for the most part, and whenever the Yeti isn’t around, it’s an easy watch. With a low budget and poor FX, I can only really praise it by SyFy standards, though. On that level, it’s pretty good (probably one of SyFy’s best ever), but I doubt it has much appeal outside of that niche market.

Rating: C+