I thought Devil's Pass was an above-average found footage movie. It begins much like The Blair Witch Project: a female student with a passion to learn more about a mysterious tragedy organizes a group to interview locals and examine the site where several deaths took place. Nine hikers in the Ural Mountains died in 1959, leaving several questions about what happened. Holly, the group leader, gets some hikers and filmmakers together and travels to the area. Unlike Blair Witch, this movie shows the monsters and reveals what happened. As the group gets closer to the site of the Dyatlov Incident, we see that Russian government/military agents are trying to stop the kids. They start an avalanche that kills one of them, they shoot a second one, and a third one gets attacked by cave creatures in an abandoned lab. It turns out that the Russians were using the hidden lab to do experiments involving teleportation. The last two students get trapped in the teleportation chamber and decide to go through what turns out to be a time warp. They are sent back to 1959 and are found in the snow along with the Dyatlov hikers. The technology, or whatever causes the portal, turns out to be harmful and Holly and Jensen are changed into zombie cave creatures. We realize they are responsible for many of the bad things that happened mysteriously to their own expedition. It's a little more complicated than that, but I was mostly satisfied with the resolution. I was shocked to learn this was directed by Renny Harlin, as I wouldn't have associated him with entertaining low-budget found footage horror. But this was fairly well done, so I say "good work" to all involved.
Review of Devil's Pass
