Ghost Mountaineer

This is quite a solid horror flick, much better than your usual teenage slasher. It has some very good photography and the young actors do a decent job. I enjoyed it quite a lot, even though it has its obvious misses and occasionally loses the track.

As spoilt by Nordic Noir, I can´t say that I had high hopes, regardless of its popularity in our cinemas (was among the most popular films in 2015) and some young actors who have made a name for themselves already... But I thought that realistic background and exotic locality could elevate the viewing experience. Well, apparently they did, as I decided to watch until the end, but there were really many scenes when I focused on beautiful nature and venue peculiarities - as the course of events and lines were not catchy. The most interesting character/performance appeared to be Vadim Andreev as the local militia chief, and everything supposed to be mystical was rather tedious or over-sophisticated, without logical round-up of events. The background voices of real persons brought along unnessary documentarism, plus too early in the film (they could have been involved towards the end, before or with credits).

6 points (performances and use of landscape - 7, the rest - 5) thanks to realistic motifs only. Alas, Must alpinist is a mediocre work even among Estonian films (= usually slow and made with limited budget).

Although pleasantly energetic and captivating at first, 'Ghost Mountaineer', first feature film by director Urmas Eero Liiv, falls apart by the end. Diverse group of students who most barely know each other travel into Siberia to find nephrite. Conflicts and wrong decisions are easy to come.

The film tries to be blend of adventure, drama, mysticism and horror. Oh, and this all is based on true events. The first, adventure part, is quite good to watch, but halfway through the movie, director starts to throw is some glimpse of horror through sloppy editing and eerie sounds. The trouble is - the horror moments are never quite horrifying. And there is no reason to throw in some supernatural moments just for the sake of it and leaving them unexplained. Especially when they don't add any real mystery to the big mystery itself. 'Ghost Mountaineer' was marketed as mystical horror film, but I wouldn't consider couple of dream sequences and telling an old urban legend as a horror film. It was poorly developed mess that couldn't understand it's own reason to exist beside the pure vanity and pretentiousness of the director.

P.S. Based on this movie - geologists are quite the jerks.

Basically, idiots who have never hiked together before inexplicably take the long way over mountains to get to a canyon with a semi-precious mineral. I say that because it only took them about 2-3 days out of 16 to get from the canyon to the village - why didn't they just begin at the village and cut their time in more than half???

Anyway, this is a laughable attempt at storytelling although the first, standard part of the hiking was fine - no different than idiot Americans doing the same. But the rest was ridiculous and the ending just weird.

Find another movie if you want horror.

While showing promise, Ghost Mountaineer crumbles beneath the weight of an uneven script, incoherent plot and story, and jarring editing. This is really too bad because it's obvious that significant and sincere effort went into making this film; but in the end it is an effortful failure.