Arctic Hollow

Trying to get past a traumatic incident, a fighter pilot gets wind of his assistance in a necessary extraction mission to rescue friends of his in a trek to the Alaskan circle to find a passageway to a Middle Earth, but when he gets stranded with them finds the area guarded by savage, unbelievable creatures.

There wasn't a whole lot to be had with this one. Among its few positives stem from the general setup at play here which manages to generate a solid setup at its main core. With the early setup showing the pilot to be dealing with his issues involving the tragic accident and his memories of the strange encounter that drags him into the search to rescue them, this provides the kind of intriguing setup that would work quite well as a means of getting him into the mix to battle the creatures. That has quite a lot to like about it with the final half featuring the atmospheric encounters within the darkened caves underground as the creatures emerge to battle the survivors that provides some rather chilling conceptual sequences at the center of this one for the main likable points here. This one does have a few major drawbacks to be had here. The main drawback to be had with this one is a seriously dull and plodding pace that's almost impossible to explain why due to the film being this short. There's little reason why a film that barely cracks the running time this one does to spend as much time as it does with so much extraneous material where it focuses on his backstory with the couple at the bar which brings him together into their sphere, his history including the traumatic accident that sends him into the heavy drinking stupor, and the utterly bland setup with the group being stranded on the mountain and needing to be rescued. None of these aspects are all that interesting or enjoyable to see play out and just lead to a wholly plodding and uneventful focus here. On top of that, there's also the excessively problematic special effects. The fact that the generally underutilized creatures look so terrible when they're shown on-screen in the absolute darkness of the caves at the end is a massively disappointing factor where it's just so lackluster to have them shown in such an environment that it's so laughably cheesy and inexcusable to be shown so briefly for what barely amounts to be worth it in terms of how bad it all looks. As well, the fact that the other effects featured here are just as bad, with a horrendously bad sound design that brings everything into a generally unlistenable muffle and a lighting design that makes everything so dark as to be hard to make out, these factors all bring about a rather large series of factors that holds it back.

Rated Unrated/R: Language and Violence.