Natural selection

'Everest' and 'The Green Inferno' offer compelling reasons to stay indoors

Movies take us to places our lives often won’t: outer space, the depths of the oceans, the darkest jungles or the solitary peak of the highest mountain. There’s a reason you’ll likely never see any of these places with your own eyes. All of them will kill you. And if you want to stand where few, if any, have stood before, not only do you have to be crazy, you’ll probably need the help of at least a couple likeminded lunatics to get the job done.

Which brings us to “Everest,” the new dramatic adventure starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, Emily Watson, Josh Brolin and John Hawkes, from the director who gave us the Denzel Washington/Mark Wahlberg buddy actioner, “Two Guns.” (Don’t worry. I don’t remember it, either.)

Fortunately, “Everest” is memorable. The story of the May 10, 1996 storm that killed eight people trapped near the summit is based on well-documented accounts in magazine articles, memoirs and documentaries. Jon Krakauer’s meticulously reported Into Thin Air is not technically the basis for “Everest,” and he recently told the Los Angeles Times that the film is “total bull.” But a fictionalized Krakauer, portrayed by the always-great Michael Kelly, figures prominently in the narrative.

We’re informed at the outset that one in four Everest climbers never returns. By the ‘90s, a cottage industry of adventure tours sprung up around Everest. Led by seasoned mountaineers, the tours have offered the promise (or perhaps illusion) of a safely guided expedition for capable alpinists who don’t necessarily have what it takes to make it to the peak and back on their own. 

“Everest” follows two groups of climbers led by Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) and Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal) as they combine forces and attempt to lead a few dozen impassioned acolytes on the lethal ascent. It all seems to go well, at first. Then a massive storm hits, leaving them trapped and perilously clinging to the top of the world as they’re brutally assaulted with wind and ice in 100-below-zero temperatures.

You’ve seen movies like “Everest” before, but this iteration looks better. As a template for heart-wrenching, vertigo-inducing disaster films, it’s not breaking much new narrative or stylistic ground, which is oddly comforting. “Everest” does, however, spend a fair amount of time developing its characters, with surprising success and memorable performances across the board. Brolin plays the stubbornly independent Texas doctor, Beck Weathers, with sympathetic depth. Watson is great as base camp leader Helen Wilton. Clarke and Gyllenhaal are compelling as the disparate guides who shepherd their flocks through catastrophe. The periphery is filled with famous faces looking concerned—Keira Knightley, Robin Wright, Sam Worthington. Though cinematically, some scenes feel pedestrian, Director Baltasar Kormákur does an admirable job of earning audience buy-in with the characters. That empathy turns to dread when everything goes to hell. 

The real star of “Everest” is the wilderness. Kormákur frames the impassive peaks with a dark sense of solitude and daunting scope made all the more intense when the fury of nature and inevitable death are unleashed. His vertiginous cinematography (blown up in IMAX 3D) straddles a line between the dream world and the real one, putting you firmly in that place you aren’t supposed to be. “Everest” is certainly meant for the big screen, and it’s worth the trip.

“Everest” is playing now in Tulsa theaters. 

The Green Inferno 

As in the case of “Everest,” my aversion to the dangers of planet Earth won’t keep me from observing (at a safe distance) the spectacle of Amazonian cannibals barbecuing a handful of misguided Internet activists.

“The Green Inferno” is fan-favorite horror auteur Eli Roth’s long-delayed homage to Ruggero Deodato’s infamous “Cannibal Holocaust” (1980). Credited as one of the genre’s most brutal films ever made (Deodato had to prove in court that he didn’t actually kill his actors), “Cannibal Holocaust” is also one of the earliest iterations of found footage horror.

“Inferno” inverts that gimmick while retaining its original spirit. A passionate activist (Ariel Levy) leads a group of college students into the Amazon, where they chain themselves to trees to stop a gas company from wiping out the natives. Live streaming smartphone footage to thwart armed mercenaries who would otherwise kill them all, the students are successful. But fate intervenes when their homeward plane goes down and the survivors are taken captive by painted headhunters with a taste for human flesh and a tradition of female circumcision.

First and foremost, this is a gory cannibal film. Your mileage may vary depending on your appetite for such things. Those fond of goofy, dark humor and bloody viscera (courtesy of “The Walking Dead” gurus) will find a lot to love; though, compared to “Cannibal Holocaust,” Roth has actually dialed back the most offensive elements. 

My reaction to “The Green Inferno” is pretty much the same I’ve had to all of Roth’s films. He has inherent visual chops, a nerd’s love of horror and a sense of bravado that mostly exceeds the actual quality of his films. His not-so-lofty goal is to get people laid after seeing a scary movie. “Hostel 2” is probably his best, and the Herzogian backdrop to “Inferno” sets it apart visually and tonally, but neither film is groundbreaking. 

Rather than misusing archaic stereotypes of native cultures, Roth mocks the social activist’s sense of faux-empowerment. He isn’t highlighting cannibalism and female circumcision to reflect any allegorical politic, even when he thinks he is. Nor does the film come off as a realistic reflection of social activists or indigenous peoples. Roth would rather unspool a grisly, fun horror story than fully sculpt a coherent political subtext. 

As horror goes, “The Green Inferno” is unapologetic and fairly effective—a gruesome little film that rings true to its exploitation roots. a

Bi-weekly bit:  ‘Goodnight Mommy’ 

The trailers for most upcoming horror films are frighteningly similar: Whispered narration and steely strings frame a creepy locale or CGI phantasm, building to a jump scare or two. It’s almost comical.

“Goodnight Mommy” is the opposite. The feature debut from Austrian filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala is a master class on establishing a mournful sense of dread without pulling any cheap tricks to get there.

The minimalist story finds a woman (Susanne Wuest) recovering from facial surgery with her twin sons (Lukas and Elias Schwarz) at a remote estate in the woods. Eventually, the children begin to doubt whether the woman under the bandages is really their mother. Weirdness ensues.

To say more would subvert the film’s greatest strength: atmosphere. The ultimate twist is telegraphed and familiar, but the chilly tone and unnerving look of “Mommy” stick with you.  

“Goodnight Mommy” is now playing at Circle Cinema.

For more of Joe on horror, check out his review of Creep and his conversation with Joshua Kline about Halloween.