The Yeti

Bluesky

Arriving with significantly more hype than most creature features these days, and with an impressive cast which includes genre stalwarts Jim Cummings and William Sadler, The Yeti is full of promise, but can it deliver? That may depend on what you’re looking for. There are gory deaths. There’s genuinely funny pastiche. There’s also an attempt at affecting character drama. The trouble is that writers/directors Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta have no idea how to knit these elements together.

We begin with the first expedition, but don’t need long to discover its fate. A woman is woken in the middle of the night. Something is skulking around the spacious wooden house where she and her colleagues are staying. As she wanders around looking for help, she witnesses a murderous act whose exaggerated nature is very much in keeping with the North American travellers’ tales that birthed the modern genre. Timbers shatter, blood flows, and there’s a reaction shot that would have made Herschell Gordon Lewis proud.

Cut to the US. It emerges that the woman we saw on that first expedition has a twin sister, and that one of the men on it was the son of an oil tycoon. Its failure to return will not be overlooked. Furthermore, the estranged daughter of that expedition’s leader is a professor who has never had the chance to go out in the field, having been crippled by polio. Played by Brittany Allen (who stole the show in Colin Minihan’s 2025 creature feature Coyotes, she’s by far the most interesting character in the group: a capable leader in other situations who knows she is out of her depth, stumbling around icy wastes in a leg brace as the intended rescue mission goes sideways.

Despite the presense of a radio communications expert, an explosives expert and a renowned soldier with a metal mask concealing what the war has done to his face, this new expeditions is poorly prepared to confront what’s out there. A lengthy scene in which they wander round a woodland glade in moonlight, taking it in turns to wander off alone an investigate suspicious noises, tries to marry the cheery coming tone of the scenes in civilisation with the mostly straight-faced horror of the film’s latter half. Allen is the only actor who successfully navigates the awkwardness of this.

By the time they reach the house where the original massacre took place (one might call it a cabin in the woods but it really is unfeasibly large – yet, strangely, nobody seems to feel the cold there), it’s clear that they have attracted the interest of a dangerous foe. A cute but grisly scene involving intestines is the film’s last shot at comedy. There may be later laughs if you’re watching in a group, but they will come mostly from appreciation of kitsch, as the story, in between brutal slayings, explores its heroine’s troubled relationship with her father and gives its monster a Fifties-style sympathetic backstory.

That’s about all there is to it. It’s nicely shot in places, and most genre fans will appreciate the practical effects work, but the story and characters are underdeveloped, and it relies heavily on stupidity to create suspense. The dialogue is clunky, and not in a clever way. it’s not abominable, but one might have hoped for more of a roar.

Source