Why spend $100,000+ and at least a month in Nepal getting acclimated to the altitude when you can watch (fictionalized version of) other people dying horribly of hypothermia and hypoxia in the comfort of your own home? Now Everest is okay, though short of spectacular. It’s easy to appreciate the whole based on a true story thing, but it’s maybe just a shade too boring and janky plot-wise.
They could’ve gone with “inspired by a true story” and made it better. However the part where the storm blows in on Jason Clarke and John Hawkes’s characters just below the summit, where the lightning cracks and the fucking cloudburst comes UP at them is freaking awesome. Just spectacular CGI design and execution in showing what happened to these poor bastards.
Of course if you want really too high up scary check out The Summit. The story of a similarly doomed expedition to K2, the world’s second highest mountain (and per capita deadlier than Everest) is free on YouTube but impossible to put here since those pants-pissing wieners won’t let other sites embed R-rated movies.