[HorrorScience] Devil's Pass (2013)

In the 80s, horror films were in fashion and produced unforgettable classics, the subgenre being slasher and its violent murderers were the most emblematic of that decade, such as Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, or Michael Myers.

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new fashionable subgenre emerged within horror cinema and it is the so-called mockumentary or mockumentary, which popularized the film The Blair Witch Project and who later reaffirmed his success with Paranormal Activity and its many sequels. I have already talked about this subgenre in this section when I analyzed the excellent Lake Mungo either Troll Hunter, and I will surely analyze other mockumentary films in future articles, because they have proliferated so much that it is inevitable to come across this type of product, sometimes forced and absurd, and losing direction in its main objective, which is to make us believe that what we are seeing was real.

Devil's Pass It is based on a real event that occurred in Russia in the late 1950s. And no, it is not a way of saying or a marketing resource like those used in fake documentaries that are based on supposed real events that never happened. The Dyatlov Pass incident actually occurred in 1959, and it is one of the many mysterious events that occurred in human history that give rise to conspiracy theories involving military secrets, government experiments, UFOs, supernatural creatures and all kinds of paranormal events.

In 1959, the lifeless bodies of 9 students who had gone mountaineering in the Ural Mountains in Russia were found. The intriguing thing about the matter, and what provokes all the strange theories that I mentioned above, is that the bodies were found scattered in different places in the snowy landscape, because the students escaped from the shelter and heat of their tents in the middle of the night and with a freezing temperature below zero. To add more mystery to the topic, several of the bodies had very severe injuries, and one of them had even lost his tongue, but the official investigation of the case concluded that nothing strange had happened and that the students' deaths were caused by bad weather and different natural and normal circumstances under those conditions.

Years later, the proliferation of theories about the case further spiced up this story by adding facts that cannot be proven true even if they claim that this was the case, such as that some of the bodies had been exposed to high levels of radiation, and presenting this as evidence that what happened was to cover up a military secret or due to an extraterrestrial invasion.

Devil's Pass is based on the Dyatlov incident, but its screenwriter, Vikram Weet, together with Renny Harlin, the director, have created their own theory about this case, relating it to another very famous real event and also the cause of many strange theories, known as Philadelphia Experiment (Philadelphia Experiment) occurred in the 1940s, and in which the US army carried out military experiments, some say aided by extraterrestrials who had hidden intentions, which aimed to achieve invisibility and teleportation, being aided by very famous scientists, such as Tesla and Einstein. It is said that they managed to make a ship disappear and after a certain time the ship reappeared. When they tried the test again, they decided to do it with a crew included, so that when they returned they could tell what exactly happened and what the place to which they were transported was like when they disappeared from this world. The result of this test was catastrophic: the ship disappeared, and upon returning the crew members had gone insane, and several of them had died, appearing fused with the hull of the ship.

Leaving history and conspiracies aside, in this mockumentary we will see that the Dyatlov case is an obsession for Holly (Holly Goss), a psychology student at the University of Oregon, and that together with two film students, Jenson (Matt Stokoe) and Denisse (Gemma Atkinson), They decide to recreate the fateful expedition that those 9 students made in 1959, as a final thesis for their corresponding university degrees. They will be joined as guides by a pair of experienced mountaineers and students at the same university, Andy (Ryan Hawley) and JP (Luke Albright).

As soon as the film finishes introducing us to the characters who will participate in this expedition, we will see images from a Russian news program that shows us how their lifeless and frozen bodies are being removed from the same mountain pass where their predecessors were found in 1959, along with their cameras, which contained all the filmed material that is supposedly what we are seeing thanks to the leak made by the fictitious Conspira-Leaks website.

Knowing from the beginning what the fate of the protagonists has been, what remains for us to know in this story is how they ended up like this, so we will go back in time thanks to all the filmed material, and we will be able to witness what happened from the beginning of their journey to the tragic end. As in all films of this subgenre, the story goes in-crescendo, developing slowly and increasing the tension little by little until reaching the climax in its last minutes.

Upon arriving in Russia, the group decides to first go to a psychiatric hospital where an old man is admitted who is supposedly the only survivor of the incident that occurred in '59. Upon arriving at the place they are treated in a very bad way and are not allowed entry, being invited in a very unfriendly manner to leave immediately. They get to see the old man from a window, and he himself shows them a message written on a piece of paper before being pulled aside by two guards, although it is in Russian and none of our protagonists understand it. Later they will ask a Russian citizen who decides to help them to translate the message for them, and it turns out to be: Run away.

Devil's Pass It has enough elements to maintain intrigue and suspense during its 96 minutes of footage. Failure in your proposal as mockumentary due to the fact that from the beginning we will notice forced scenes that, although those filming are supposed to be film students about to graduate, they could not have been filmed in that way, with such careful angles during, for example, scenes of discussions or trivial conversations between the members of the group. After the first 10 minutes we will forget that it is trying to be a documentary, but fortunately this does not overshadow the story itself nor does it diminish the entertainment it can give us. The best thing about this film is the snowy and beautiful Russian landscapes and the mysterious events that we will witness throughout the film, which will make everyone begin to develop their own theories about it and will keep us interested until the end, where we will check if our theories were correct or not.

Some curiosities about Devil's Pass:

• Renny Harlin is also the director of certain well-known Hollywood productions, such as cliffhanger either Die Hard 2. He is of Finnish nationality, and in his films he usually adds one or two elements that refer to his country. In Devil's Pass We find a small Finnish flag in JP's backpack, and we will also see that one of the characters uses a compass that he mentions is Suunto brand, which is a well-known compass manufacturer in Finland.
• En el minuto 38 aproximadamente, durante una conversación entre dos de los personajes, podremos ver de fondo el rápido paso de dos criaturas. Esta y otras escenas han provocado varios debates en los que se intenta definir qué es lo que llegamos a ver, ya que no se puede apreciar claramente. Algunos hablan de lobos, otros de humanoides con apariencia de lobo, y otros de yetis. Incluso de ha llegado a debatir que en la escena en particular que nombro lo que pasa por el fondo son dos lobos y que a diferencia de otras escenas del filme donde también vemos cosas en el fondo, esta no fue intencionada por parte del director.
• El título original de la película y el elegido para su distribución internacional es el mismo que el del caso en que se basa: The Dyatlov Pass Incident. Luego de haber sido estrenada, para su distribución en dvd y bluray se decidió cambiarle el nombre por otro más corto, dando origen al nombre actual.