Black Mountain Side (2015)
Black Mountain Side is a slow burning, atmospheric film that mixes lovecraftian themes with paleolithic civilization. Upon reading that this was about a group of scientists in freezing cold nowhere, Canada that dig up a strange object that has sinister effects, my mind immediately went to Carpenter's The Thing as well as Mountains of Madness by Lovecraft. This particular group was researching very ancient civilizations which immediately gave me a thrill because in my opinion nothing goes together better than the ancient past and horror. And it's so rare to find a horror film that adequately delves into the subject. This film is an extremely slow burn that effectively builds tons of tension through both atmosphere and the oppressive surroundings but it can get extremely irritating when they don't go enough into subjects that would make the film either more interesting, more terrifying, or more symbolic- which I think should be important considering other themes.
The slow pace also does nothing for character exposition and by the end it feels like Friday the 13th in the way that just so much dialogue has contributed nothing to the personalities of the characters as well as how the film begins to devolve into slasher territory.
On the upside, the cinematography is absolutely gorgeous and the more intellectual subjects of the script as well as the languid pace actually help in preventing this film from completely descending into anything cheesy or bad. This is a good film but it's also very frustrating because there are one or two changes they could have made to make it great and they just didn't.
7/10
Review of Black Mountain Side
