The Cinema File #191: “Abominable Snowman” Review

So, I just watched Abominable Snowman starring a bunch of people you've never heard of and poor man's Highlander Adrian Paul. At one point towards the end, a giant furry snow creature hangs out of the open door of a rapidly plummeting helicopter, and our drunken hero pilot screams “Get that ugly Chewbacca off my damn helicopter!” prompting another character to comply by throwing a live grenade in its mouth. Yep, we're into the Syfy Channel Original Movies again. How sweet it is.

Abominable Snowman is exactly the kind of movie you no doubt assume it is if you haven't already seen it, a group of people in a snowy locale beset by giant hairy carnivorous monsters. Just when I thought I might have gotten a brief respite from the low end of the Syfy spectrum as seen in Flying Monkeys after the far more enjoyable Heebie Jeebies, here we go again with another schlocky throwaway that seems to think it can be justified purely on the title, without actually trying to be entertaining.

I'm not asking for Winnie and her makeshift flamethrower or anything (though as with any movie, that would have made this a hell of a lot more awesome), but just give me something to latch onto so that the bad CGI creature effects aren't the highlight. Even Flying Monkeys, as much as it was sort of slow moving and ultimately underwhelming, was never outright boring, and the brief twist with their ability to duplicate added something of interest. Here the big reveal is that when you think there's only one of them, there are actually two. Riveting!

The cast is whatever you would call one notch below one note. Is zero note a thing? They suck is my point. We split up the action between two leaders and a girl, the rest being basically monster fodder, with one of the main guys crazily stupid, the other comically wooden, and the girl taking on the role of too many female protagonists in these movies: flighty damsel. And you'll note that none of these characters is Adrian Paul, who might be loosely considered the draw of the movie if you gave a shit about that crappy Highlander show from the 90's, which I don't. He's actually a relatively minor character, which seems like a deliberate “fuck you” to what I assume is the film's intended audience of people who like terrible things.

Can't find a pic of the Snowman, this is more awesome.

Abominable Snowman is easily the worst Syfy Original I've seen so far in my current retrospective of the network's recent films, and the first one that I would outright advise that you skip over, even if you're as much of a die hard fan as I am. The fact that we got through five before I could actually say that is actually a bit surprising, and enough of a solace to keep me going through this experiment, but that doesn't make this piece of shit any better. Okay, moving on to the next one.