If you suffer from insomnia, “The Yeti” (2026) is the perfect movie to fall asleep to. It has enough solid elements to draw you in but fails to ever cohere into anything that can sustain interest. Set in the Alaskan Territory in 1947, an oil expedition team goes missing, which leads to the son of a tycoon of Sunday Oil, Merriell Sunday Jr. (Eric Nelsen, “The Wolf and the Lamb”), to assemble a rescue team to look for them, which includes Elaine “Ellie” Bannister (Brittany Allen), the navigator and daughter of one of the men on the mission, but they end up in the same bind as their daddies. Can they break the cycle? Even grading on a curve for inexperienced filmmakers, more money would not help this movie. The filmmakers need more experience in writing feature length stories and should also watch more movies.
If “The Yeti” attracts you, it will be because the actors make a meal out of a morsel, and the audience will do their best to hang on and see if their performances will lead to anything that amounts to a story. Codirectors and cowriters Gene Gallerano and Willia Pisciotta do better with the setup than the follow through. It opens with the original team, who is barely introduced or individuated, but create a strong first impression. Hollis Bannister (underutilized William Sadler) is shown looking at something in a cage. Meanwhile indoors, Dr. Marianne Lamb (Heather Lind) walks around four men at a card table, but she is not playing duck duck goose or trying to signal the others’ hands to one of the players: Lane (Jimmy Mehs), Bennett (Zach Franklin), Evans (Jeff Barry) and Milt (Paul McCabe Jr.). She chooses Lane for a dance, and Lane chooses one of the other three to take his chips if he will fix the hole in the ceiling. Unfortunately, that guy is the first on screen death. What is his name? Does he have any characteristics except a brief flicker of attraction between Marianne and the red shirt? No. If you care about them, it is because of the chemistry and warmth between the actors, not anything innately compelling about the characters. Merriell Sunday Sr. (Corbin Bernsen) remains offscreen until the denouement except for a clip during a newsreel scene.
It is a problem that plagues the rescue team too. The actors are giving their all and ground their paper-thin characters with gravitas and authentic emotion, but the story does nothing with their work. Ellie and Jr. are supposed to be foils, the children trying to carve their own space in the world outside of the shadow of their great fathers. Jr. is written ambiguously forcing Nelsen to switch from warmth and understanding to brusque and dismissive. Nelsen seems to have a penchant for choosing outsized characters with accents, and it would be nice to see him in a good movie to gauge his talent. Allen has what it takes to be the protagonist, but Ellie never has a storyline that adds up to much, and there is no feeling of catharsis even as she comes to some resolution about her childhood traumas. The emotional manipulation does not work.
The spectre of world wars haunts most of the team. Belle Parker (Elizabeth Cappuccino), nicknamed Kid, is the daughter of a WWII vet who used to socialize at the VFW and feels comfortable with the vets on the rescue team. Leander Coates (Linc Hand), nicknamed Watchdog, wears a mask over his face like Jack Huston’s character in “Boardwalk Empire,” served in both world wars and cares the most about each team member’s safety. Booker Marchmont (Jim Cummings, hot, “Redux Redux”), the communications man who served on the Enola Gay, hits it off with Ellie. Dr. Margaret Lamb (Christina Bennett Lind) is less frightened and more scientifically curious about who is killing off everyone and is indeed the twin to the other Dr. Lamb and in real life the other Lind. Gallerano wears another metaphorical hat and rounds out the gang to chew the scenery as Daniel “Dynamite” Hewitt, an insensitive lout and drunk who acts more like a prospector mining for gold than a munitions expert and gets a Western twang on the score when he appears. He dies in a showy way that is more confusing because of the way that one character reacts and stays mum.
Did you get all of that? Because if you watch “The Yeti,” it is unlikely that most, if any, will create a lasting impression, especially once the crap starts hitting the fan. How is the horror or the yeti mythology? Meh. A 20,000-year-old animal who Alexander the Great hunted sounds impressive, but everything feels like it was shot on a soundstage, which is accurate. Some of my best friends were filmed on soundstages (I kid), and if the story was better, maybe it would work, but all those characters feel as if they exist to become Yeti food, and if life was fair, they would. When the monster’s motivation for killing is revealed, it does not help much, and it is a perfect way to kill all of the film’s potential for guilt free monster hunting. The buckets of blood and guts are greatly appreciated as well intentioned and big swings, but the characters’ reaction or lack thereof make them seem retroactively stupid and will have viewers yearning for the yeti to pick up the pace and finish them off since they are too dumb to live. There is even a scene that feels like a homage to “Blade: Trinity” (2004) as a character takes a second from watching out for monster to listen to tunes on her headphones while the loud ass Yeti roads and tramples through the woods. Would not the ground shake? The monster is not scary because it is too hard to get invested in the characters. It is also too generic in a roar, argh way. There is no sense of wonder or curiosity. Once the Yeti appears, you will likely care less even when he hits the Zoolander pose. Also, would not it be cool if it just turned out to be a polar bear because as cute as they are, they are terrifying?
If there is a reason to watch “The Yeti,” it is to watch Bernsen deliver one of his perfect magnificent bastard performances. It is almost verging on Gene Hackman levels of greatness, but it is also plagued with the generic sadistic, intimidating father, which was done in a perfect understated way in “Marama” (2025) without a crap movie encasing it. The film swings moods so often that by the time that he appears, you may no longer care. It is mostly as serious as a heart attack except during the news reel scene and press conference where the filmmakers seem to be borrowing a page from “Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011). It is the first and last time that the film reflects any sense of pizazz or humor. The denouement borrows so heavily from any number of “King Kong” movies that it is not worth pointing out an individual one.
If you are a fan of the cast, maybe “The Yeti” is worth your time, but it will not be for long because it will make you fall asleep just when it finally gets interesting in the final stretch. I watched it two times to make sure that I was not sleepy, but nope, it is a snoozefest. It is not worth your time. The filmmakers need to become better writers because they did nothing with their talented cast and at least interesting concept. It is the kind of movie that you forget that you are watching and wander away from the room as it plays. It is boring AF.
