Film #22 — 1/1 Canadian Film; 9/9 Decades
By C. Ramsay
Featuring a premise that’s always fun to see new approaches to—an isolated group of people being slowly picked off by something or someone in an extremely remote area—Black Mountain Side is unfortunately unsuccessful in its addition to the catalogue. Sticking relentlessly to its slow pace, which serves more to simply wait out the story beats than it does to contribute to the atmosphere, an attempt is made to keep attention on the characters, but the mediocre acting means the film is constantly shoving a stick into its own spokes.
The effort is felt right off the bat, and while thought behind the camerawork is appreciated, every single shot feels overly planned and meant to represent some deeper meaning, which becomes distracting very quickly. It seems like there was indecision around whether the camerawork should make the audience feel like a fly on the wall, held hostage to witness the events but helpless to do anything about them, or a member of the crew, equally at risk to what lurks in the shadows. Though it’s to be expected that John Carpenter’s The Thing would be inescapable for inspiration to some extent, certain characters here are stylized so similarly that a couple of the actors even have a physical resemblance through their physical features, facial hair, clothing, and mannerisms, which further works to remove the viewer from the moment rather than linking them to it.
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