Movie Review: Everest could dissuade aspiring mountain climbers

The movie named after the world’s tallest mountain is just as scary as the real thing. Everest, directed by Baltasar Kormákur, is based on the true story of a group of mountain climbers that attempted climbing Mount Everest in 1996.

Everest begins with Rob Hall, co-founder of mountaineering guide company Adventure Consultants, traveling to Nepal. Over the next thirty minutes of the movie, he helps his clients acclimatize to the altitude and lack of oxygen.

The reality of the danger sets in as they pass bodies and people throwing up blood on the way to the second camp. The foreshadowing begins when the group gets informed on all of the fun ways they can die including hypothermia, hallucinations, fluid filling your lungs, suffocation, and other forms of oxygen deprivation.

The end of this sequence marked about the same time my eyes made their own acclimatization. I saw this movie in 3D, and my dislike for it will never end. My eyes were watering for the first twenty minutes of the movie and, as I said earlier, weren’t fully adjusted until I was an hour into the film.

This isn’t a negative for the movie itself, but movies in general are just less enjoyable when you have heavy glasses over the ones you already need to wear. On the bright side, there were no scenes that really screamed, “We’re a 3D movie. Look at us!” with things jumping right at your face.

Because the story is grounded in reality, the causes for the accidents are put into place way before they happen. This is a definite plus. It works almost like a butterfly effect where if one person would have done their job, no one would have died. The movie will dramatize some things, and has one scene that I called bologna on in the theater. If it hadn’t actually happened, I would’ve been really bothered by its deus ex machina.

Other than 127 Hours, no movie that was based on a true story has made me feel like I was really there like Everest has. In the second half of the movie, you could really feel the desperation of those stuck on the mountain without oxygen. I spent at least an hour reading about the real event.

I’d really recommend seeing Everest in theaters, but I can’t recommend spending double normal ticket price for the IMAX. Seeing it on that big of a screen was awesome, but having to stomach the 3D for the whole movie lessened the experience if anything.