DVD Review: DONNER PASS Promises Chilly Scenes of Winter

I'd love to say that Elise Robertson, actress turned director, brings something new or fresh to the "serial killer in the frozen woods" sub-genre, thanks to her distaff perspective on horror. While her work is certainly competent, however, she's not able to overcome the limitations imposed by R. Scott Adams' script.

The setup is fine. The real-life tragedy of Donner Pass is well-known. In the mid-19th Century, a party of settlers from the East ran into terrible winter conditions, got stranded, and eventually resorted to cannibalism to survive. As a child growing up in Southern California, studying the historical account made me leery of traveling in stormy conditions, even in a motor vehicle with a working heater. After all, you never know when your siblings might be tempted to eat your flesh, even if you weren't quite dead yet.

The film titled Donner Pass begins in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1846, with a little different spin on the classic tale, and then we flash forward to the present, and realize that history has been rewritten by a young man. His version is quite bloodthirsty, featuring George Donner intentionally killing the others, with the desire to eat live human flesh so he can inherit their life spirit. The three other young people scoff at and/or correct him, and it's not clear if he really believes his version or was just playing a gag.

The group is composed of two couples and a lone male, Thomas (Erik Stocklin). He's a super-quiet, weird guy, whose parents own the cabin in the woods, and appears to be crushing on kind yet fiery redhead Kayley (Desiree Hall). She's paired up with Mike (Colley Bailey), an inconsiderate jock of a dude. Kayley's cousin Nicole (Adelaide Kane) is an unhappy girl who doesn't really want to be there.

When the group stops after dinner to put chains on the tires, a local tells them of a recent, disturbing murder, which sets them on edge. After arriving at the cabin, Nicole's "friends" arrive with her boyfriend, Derek (Dominic DeVore). They're a boisterous group of rowdy hooligans, three asshole alpha males and another girlfriend. Therefore, they establish six out of the eight characters as being ones we'd be happy to see die as soon -- and as painfully -- as possible.

When the first teen death finally arrives, there's no build-up, no tension, just a red splat and that's that. The remainder of the movie proceeds along pre-built tracks, with regular stops for bloodshed and an absence of genuine fright or ghoulish surprises, before arriving at its expected conclusion.

As I implied at the outset, Donner Pass is not terrible, but neither is it very good. It falls into the yawning middle gap of mediocrity, in which some of the talent involved may go on to do bigger and better things. Desiree Hall is a bright, warm, and appealing presence, and her performance is a bright spot. In the case of director Robertson, I'd like to see what she could do with a script that did not succumb so easily to the tropes of the trade.

Donner Pass is now available on DVD.