HIMALAYA (2024)

Streaming on Tubi!
Directed/Written by Brandon Walker.
Check out the trailer here!!

This one falls into both the Found Footage 101 and Toes of Terror categories. A team of paranormal investigators head to the Himalayas to find the elusive Snow Ghost. While some of the team sit by a toasty fire by in a cabin, esteemed explorer and researcher Yuma Sato (played by Akihiro Kitamura) ventures into a deep cave where a team of explorers have recently gone missing in order to capture the elusive beast on camera.

Are the actors successfully acting like they aren’t acting?
The acting is pretty ok here. While the concept of the film is that it is an investigative paranormal broadcast, the hosts are a bit stiff, but Kitamura is decent as the lone cave explorer who slowly goes crazy the colder and deeper in the caves he gets. Kitamura as Sato makes a journey from rational scientist to raving lunatic that is gradual and pretty believable, though I think it takes much more time than allotted in the film to fall victim to hypothermia and paradoxical undressing. Still, I really liked the way they fleshed out Sato’s character well, as they gave him a backstory leading all the way back to his childhood where he read a book of monsters and decided then and there to be a monster hunter.

Does the footage found seem authentic and untouched by additional production (which means there is no omniscient editor making multiple edits between cameras or an invisible orchestra providing music)?
While the switching between cameras is explained as this is a produced show with multiple cameras in use, there is an explanation at the beginning that this footage has been edited together at the beginning. The film does cheat in the fact that it uses musical cues while in the tunnel and unless Dr. Sato had a keyboardist along with him as he crawled through the tunnels, I don’t think that music should have been there. For me, this makes the film less authentic and therefore less effective in convincing me that this is footage found.

Why don’t they just drop the camera and get the hell out of there?
Dr. Yuma Sato doesn’t drop his camera because he wants to document this journey for science and fame. Later, he’s just nuts and seems to forget the camera is on. The folks in the cabin try to retain the show despite how Sato’s sanity is crumbling and have a show to maintain so they are trying to save face by switching to the skeptic and local mystic in between shots of Sato crawling through the tunnels.

Is there an up-nose BLAIR WITCH confessional or a REC-drag away from the camera?
The camera is always kind of up Sato’s nose while crawling through the cave, but there is no real confessional, as he is conversating with the rest of his team back in the cabin. So his narration is less cringy than the BLAIR WITCH confessional trope. There are a few drag-aways, a la the end of REC, but one of them actually made me jump, though the other felt extraneous and inimaginative.

Does anything actually happen? Is the lead in too long and the payoff too short?
There is quite a long lead-in to the action, but the gusts on the show in the cabin and the increasing amount of weirdness going on is dispersed pretty evenly. Once Sato begins to lose his mind, things get wild and wacky pretty quickly, leading to an explosive ending involving the elusive Snow Ghost aka the Abominable Snowman.

Does the film add anything to the subgenre and is it worth watching?
I don’t know if HIMALAYA adds to the found footage subgenre as it is put together more like paranormal shows gone wrong like GHOST WATCH and LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL. In this sense, it seems to be on the cusp of a new corner of the found footage subgenre where it is staged as a mockumentary at first, but then quickly turns into a more immediate horror show. The film does venture into some relatively uncharted areas involving Bigfoot’s connections with the paranormal, suggesting that the cryptid is more of an interdimensional being than an actual flesh and blood monster. For those details, I’m going to give HIMALAYA…three big feets.

While things get goofy at times and the budget is obviously low, I did like the format of HIMALAYA, the acting was ok, and the monster, while obviously a man in a suit, actually made me jump a time of two. And that’s more than I can say about most found footage films and bigfoot films out there today.