An Expedition to Hunt EVIL is now EVIL Hunting the Expedition. “The Yeti” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on June 5, 2026

“The Yeti” Stomping Its Way onto Blu-ray!

Alaska, 1947 – an oil tycoon’s expedition goes missing after the team doesn’t report to the return boat and a SOS is transmitted days later. The oilman’s son gathers his own team of uniquely skilled experts to track down the whereabouts of his father and the rest of the missing expedition. Ellie Bannister, a washed out of cartographer and explorer, is hired to lead the trip because her estranged father Hollis was a part of the first expedition. Despite her own self-doubting hesitations, Ellie agrees to aid her services but when they arrive, they’re met with a force of evil long thought of urban legend. One-by-one, they’re being picked off, chewed apart, and spat out in a heap of blood and guts as the creature after them is hunting them down as intruders and pillagers of their snowy forest land. It’s up to Ellie and the remaining survivors had to contact the boat in the midst of a storm in order to escape with their lives and bodies still intact.

Horror films about the Abominable Snowman, or even his forestry cousin Big Foot, are always hit or miss, with most of them being duds that don’t do the urban legendary big fellas justice. And don’t even get me started on those grandiose-embellished documentaries. Co-writers-and-directors Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta are taking their shot on the snowy sasquatch with their latest 2026 film, “The Yeti.” The film is Gallerano and Pisciotta’s first feature length film after having a decent, more than a decade’s worth of short film credits to their name. The U.S. production builds snowy, forest-filled stages inside Buffalo, New York’s Buffalo FilmWorks to double as the harsh, snowy landscape of Alaska, avoiding long and wide shots in full light to make it more claustrophobic while and contained to effectively represent a location in the 49^th state. Torfoot Films and Hardscrabble Film Company serve as the film studios with Johnathan Browniee (“Satanic Panic”), Frank Coppola (“Givers of Death”), Ross Meyerson, and Romano Natale producing.

“The Yeti” is compromised of an ensemble cast of mostly rescue expeditioners heading into the unknown parts of Alaska to make contact with another expedition team who fell off the radar. The story is female-led by Brittany Allen (“Jigsaw,” “What Keeps You Alive”) as an afraid of failure Ellie Bannister with haunted history and a bum leg due to polio. Though deeply flawed in a traditional sense, this doesn’t stop Bannister from accepting the position of expedition leader and cartographer-explorer and while Bannister is rising to the challenges to meet her character arc, Allen doesn’t exude the attributes of heroism with freezing in fear, drifting off with music, and never really coming toe-to-toe with the titular villain and, instead, having more complex conversations and actions with her estranged father as part of a rekindling process. The rest of her team shows more guts – literally and figuratively – without much of a backstory to them and that wastes the potential to have some sort of strong feelings toward their characters, such as war vet Leander Coates (Linc Hand, “The Other Side”)) who wears a half-mask painted with a crude imitation of a human face, Daniel ‘Dynamate’ Hewitt (Gene Gallerno) as a spacy, good ol’boy drunk and explosive expert, Booker (Jim Cunnings, “Halloween Kills”) as the silent and stoic radio ma, Merriell Sunday (Eric Nelsen, “Nightmare Cinema”) as the missing Tycoon’s son who either has a hidden agenda or has ants in his pants, Margaret Lamb (Christina Bennett Lind, “Calico Skies”) as an animal expert who doesn’t get to use much of her skills and knowledge, and Belle Parker (Elizabeth Cappuccino, “Super Dark Times”) as…well…I don’t really know, assistant to the Tycoon’s son possibly? Parker’s contribution to the expedition team is never really explained. The film rounds out with two big hitters in Corbin Bersen (“Major League”) as the oil Tycoon who does have a hidden agenda and William Sadler (“The Shawshank Redemption”) as Ellie’s father trying to stop that agenda.

Yeti centric stories should exhibit the ugliest, ferocious, hairiest, tallest, and meanest, white furred primate to ever walk the Earth in folklore. “The Yeti” accomplishes that in a modest level that tries to meet eye-to-eye with Ryan Schifrin’s 2006 film “Abominable” that truly does have a ruthless creature in its blood soaked and gory entrails. Gallerano and Pisciotta’s Yeti, brought to life by Wayne Anderson (“The Predator”) and Ali Gordon (“Hellraiser” ’22), is tall, stringy and matted hair, large mouth with razor teeth, sharp claws, and an overall, an oversized, white gorilla on steroids. Couple this beast’s design with gory practical effects by Anderson and Gordon as well and you have potential breathing down your neck! Yet, “The Yeti” fails to impress despite a visually visceral creature and buckets of bloodshed as the story can’t hold the pieces together even in its rudimentary and predictable state. Characters are never given the opportunity to make an impact, becoming quick Yeti fodder for the sake of impressive on-screen kills – one man eaten in half, another perforated by a claw, and another’s arm is ripped right off as the Yeti compresses his foot down onto his chest. There’s little to like about the actions taken and the lack of empathy in their behavior that snag “The Yeti’s” success for an indie product that tries, and to the point, succeeds being larger than its creature mythology. The creature has more depth and understanding, holding onto a rationality universally understandable, while the characters, who are supposed to be the protagonist and principal good guys on the side of nature or humanity are terribly murky to the point trying to relate to them felt futile.

Well Go USA Entertainment brings Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta’s “The Yeti” to physical media with an AVC encoded, 1080p Hi-Def resolution, BD25 Blu-ray. I’m curious why the decision was made for a smaller capacity Blu-ray because aesthetically, “The Yeti” uses low light, fog, has plenty of tenebrous portions that tend to wreak havoc on the compression decoding. Same can be said here as “The Yeti” suffers from obscurity infractions that reduce the detail considerably. If looking at the backside of the physical release, as we’ll also go over later, the stills are quite sharp, suggesting the master to have peak quality whereas the Blu-ray sees a reduction in quality. Joel Froome’s cinematography is an initial mix bag of harsh lighting, black-and-white, and lower color saturation to be more a period pieces of the 1940s-1950s but once the rescue team is out in the field, Froome switches gears quickly to a claustrophic and cold color mise-en-scene that doesn’t expand landscapes, keeping the area tight amongst the trees with poor visibility due to the blizzard-lite conditions. The film’s aspect ratio is a widescreen 1.78:1. The release comes with two English audio tracks, a primary DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and a Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo. The lossless 5.1 is hands down the option to go with with plenty of atmospherics wind gusts, tree rustles, and off-screen Yeti sounds to build tension and isolation. Dialogue renders over nice and clear with prominence amongst the rest of the layers. The soundtrack is also equally balanced and integrated but also camouflages in the background, never really becoming a character itself nor being remarkably memorable. English and French subtitles are optionally available. Other than trailers and Well Go USA Entertainment previews, the Blu-ray is a feature-only release with no bonus content or stinger scene. An O-ring slipcover with a telling image of size and ferocity sheaths the standard Blu-ray Amaray. The same slipcover image art is also the single-sided sleeve and there are no tangible extras within. Rated R for bloody violence content and some gore, “The Yeti” Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment has a feature runtime of 93 minutes and is region A locked.

Last Rites: “The Yeti’s” a strong enough entry to viciously vilify the snowbound mythical urban legend but directors Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta don’t finish the job giving the narrative feeble legs on the stand where it counts as blood and guts alone can’t make an abominable snowman film worth watching.

“The Yeti” Stomping Its Way onto Blu-ray!

Piloting Toward a Path of Mob Hired EVIL! “Flight Risk” reviewed! (Lionsgate / Blu-ray – DVD – Digital)

Posted by Steven Lewis on April 11, 2025

“Flight Risk” Blu-ray Takes Off and Is Now Availablle to Own!

After tracking down and arresting a criminal kingpin’s accountant in an Alaskan hotel, U.S. Marshall Madolyn agrees to a plea deal with the accountant in exchange for his incriminating testimony that would lock away the mob boss for years, but before prosecution can get underway, the U.S. Marshall must get her witness to New York City. Charactering a Cessna 208 light aircraft to escort them out of Alaska, the more-than-eccentric rustic pilot is more tirelessly inquisitive than charismatically charming toward the Marshall about having a suspect chained to the seat in the rear of his plane while also gabbing about casual, byway pleasantries and his rural, for-hire lifestyle as a pilot. Little do Madolyn and the accountant know is that their pilot is a sadist assassin hired by mob boss and by the time they reach cruising altitude, Madolyn finds herself confined with a relentless killer and without the knowhow to fly a plane herself.

Not since 2016 has “Lethal Weapon” and “Mad Max” actor Mel Gibson directed a film, that film being the World War II action-drama, “Hacksaw Ridge.” Gibson returns to being behind-the-camera in 2025 with his latest venture, an aerial, hitman thriller “Flight Risk” from a contained debut big picture script by Jared Rosenberg. “Flight Risk” strays from the normal course of being an epic feature that usually draws the cinematic eye of Gibson with being a smaller production, an intimate cast, and isolated mostly on a deconstructed light aircraft in front of what is essentially a floor-to-ceiling, 180-degree IMAX screen simulator to depict coursing through the snow-topped mountains of the Alaska Range. Gibson produces the story along with Bruce Davey, John Fox, and John Davis in a Lionsgate presented combined company production from Davis Entertainment, Icon Productions, Media Capital Technologies, Hammerstone Pictures, and Blue Rider Pictures.

Three onscreen principals and a handful of voiceover work is all there is to “Flight Risk’s” casting with many of the scenes “high” above ground inside the tight confines of a personal aircraft to intensify the close-quartered combat with the unspoken caveat of nowhere to run, nowhere to hide thousands of feet up in the clouds. Actress Michelle Dockery, known for her role as Lady Mary Crawley in the dynamic upstairs, downstairs period drama series “Downton Abbey,” exchanges her glittering ballroom gowns and British accent for a sidearm Glock and a flat American-beurocratic accent as U.S. Marshall Madolyn with a complicated backstory that places her back into the field after being assigned desk duty when a witness dies in her custody. Dockery is all business and no pleasure with a retaining wall that holds all her emotions in so she can focus on the important opportunity to be back into the field. Audiences will be thrusted right the middle of the opportunity and experience her unpleasant history being unraveled exposition as she begins to empathize and sympathize with her current witness, Winston, a skilled accountant with a harmless, passive proclivity played by with the sarcastic reflex of a frightened squirrel in Topher Grace (“Predators,” “Spider-Man 3”). Madolyn and Winston slowly, simmering bond, merging into a fight or flight friendship out of from being an authoritative escort and detainee, is forged by fire when Mark Wahlberg’s receding hairline, eccentrically crazy, sadistic rapist of a hitman pilot attempts to restrain Madolyn and divert Winstown for his own personal pleasure on the behalf of the Mob Boss instruction. Likely Wahlberg’s most depraved role since 1996’s “Fear,” the “Transformers” and “Daddy’s Home” actor puts forth less of his muscular tone and good looks by stepping into a balding, gum-chewing wild eye maniac, relentlessly bloodthirsty with the gift of grotesque gab, in a cat-and-mouse tit-for-tat game for the plane yoke and control. A voice cast rounds out the rest that push the story in deception and direction with Leah Remini (“Old School”) and Paul Ben-Victor (“Body Parts”) as Madolyn’s colleagues who may or may not be corrupt and Maaz Ali (“Anxious”) as your friendly and flirtatious pilot instructor.

An absolute different kind of project for director Mel Gibson that’s not historical, period, or epic as he takes off into unknown territory and elevating as a director who can remove himself from the bigger picture for a smaller one. “Flight Risk” is a prime example of what Hollywood should be putting into production rather than squandering millions on grand flops but limited the budget that, in turns, limits the star power and conceding the story to saturate with substance rather than with ostentatious effects. “Flight Risk” proved to be a modest profiting film on what is now considered a meager budget of $25 million, but a profit is a profit, and the thriller is highly entertaining and engrossing with solid performance supporting a step-by-step, linear story arc. Granted, the film isn’t completely without flaws. While Johnny Derango (“Fatman”) can capture the correct angles in the plane’s small, confined space and gratifying the depth with the visual screen through the plane windows, these aspects are negatively counterbalanced by visual effects that stunt the aesthetics with cheap-looking knockoffs of exteriors at the beginning and end of the film. Fortunately, these scenes are scarce and does continue the yard forward without looking back as girth of Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Dockery, and Topher Grace vie for their moment in the spotlight with their character’s idiosyncrasies.

The Lionsgate presented “Flight Risk” takes cue from the locomotive folktale being the little film that could, replacing the small train for a small plane and chugging, climbing up the Alaska mountain of nonstop thrills. The new combo format Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital set from the company evokes many ways to enjoy the latest, and humblest, Mel Gibson picture. The Blu-ray is AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 while the DVD is MPEG2 encoded, upscaled to 1080p, on a DVD9. In covering the Blu-ray, the picture is near perfect without compression issues faulter a landscape of whites, blues, and the spotted greeneries in between that make up the Alaska geography on the big 180’ volume screen for pseudo flight. The matte visual mixed with the angle of the cameras work to the location’s authenticity and the camera angles solidify that the illusion while the pixel range sharpens any loose ends that might occur in presentation. Coloring and breadth of saturation diffuse fine with an organic look except for the VFX that stands out like a sore thumb. English Dolby Atmos creates an immersive audible impression, splicing through the channels that reflect more in the back channels of Mark Wahlberg’s frantic, and sordid, diatribes from the plane’s cargo tail. Exteriors are not as explosive around the plane as expected with the Dolby’s loss of fidelity but, to the advantage of the story, the engine him and the turbulence has an agreeable depth muffle to it in the surrounding channels and into the frontloaded dialogue, which is intelligible and without unintended equipment interference. Also included are French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks and an English descriptive audio. English, Spanish and French subtitles are optional. Risk Management: Making flight Risk is the standard fare behind-the-scenes cast-and-crew interviews with some raw behind-the-camera shots surrounding the genesis of “Flight Risk” and the how certain aspects of the film, such as cinematography and Mark Wahlberg’s devilish persona, are achieved. The theatrical trailer rounds out the encoded special features. Personally, I was not impressed with the cover art that’s on the Amaray and the cardboard O-slip with a sheen coating that puts Wahlberg front-and-center of a misleading campaign of the ruthless killer looking oddly unflappable while zipping fighter jet theatrics are composited over his midsection; the whole illustration just doesn’t speak the “Flight Risk’s” disposition. Nothing else to note tangibly other than the 4K digital code insert in its usual slot. Rated R for violence and language, Lionsgate Blu-ray is region A encoded and has a textbook runtime of 91-minutes.

Last Rites: “Flight Risk” cruises at a palatable attitude of flight dynamics, aerial assassinations, and the rehabilitation of broken character in Mel Gibson’s smaller, but mighty, latest feature.

“Flight Risk” Blu-ray Takes Off and Is Now Availablle to Own!

EVIL Is Everywhere. Even in Idyllic Alaska. “No Way Out” reviewed! (Baird Media & London Levine Pictures / Digital Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on August 27, 2020

A wilderness camping trip in the rural terrain of an Alaskan landscape becomes the serene backdrop for a pair of couples on a romantic getaway. With their backpacks in tow and a sense of adventure in hand, one of aspirations amongst the peaceful setting would be to create an ideal engagement spot for a happily affectionate couple while the other couple taps the trip as a therapeutic escape to rekindle or salvage a flailing relationship. Deeper and deeper they trek into the woods that begins to feel engulfing with a sense of lurking, ominous eyes voyeuristically peering at them from afar and as gunfire rings out in the distance and camping gear winds up missing, spine-tingling fear starts to set in for the couples eager to leave quickly as they came, but those in the woods, those menacing figures that have been keeping distance, are now toying with the campers’ very lives.

Impelled into a throng of horror films set with backpackers becoming lost on a camping trip with a mysterious figure in the midst, “No Way Out” struggles to find a distinct voice from writer and star Chris Levine and introducing Joe Hamilton in his very first feature length directorial. Following his 2017 “Anabolic Life,” a crime-injected thriller circled around bodybuilding, co-written alongside Cameron Barsanti and Landon Williams, Levine steps solo into the horror ring, penning a camping-gone-wrong 2020 released thriller that displays themes of secrecy, family, and the mentally unstable futile pursuit of happiness compounded by half-frozen isolation off of sideroad Alaska and a tactical gas mask wearing loom creeping through the thicket. “No Way Out” is an independent funded production by the Alaskan based companies, Baird Media (Charles A. Baird) and RocketJoe Films, which I believe “No Way Out” used the latter company’s monolithic humanoid props from a defunct film entitled “Seven Bones,” and in association with services provided by Levine’s own co-founded London Levine Pictures company.

The small cast is centrically focus around the four campers for approx. 98% of the film, only briefly swerving away from the core characters to interject some meaningless exchanges between backpackers and to also setup a lying-in-wait antagonist to build up prelude suspense. Leading the foursome is Chris Levine as a multi-hat contributor along with his written and co-produced thriller by playing Blake, a hands off, anti-woods boyfriend being dragged against his will to go camping in order to recoup his girlfriend’s goodwill in their sinking relationship. “Apocalypse Rising” and “President Evil’s” Johanna Rae is Blake’s contentious other half as girlfriend Jessica. The dynamics between Levine and Rae couldn’t push the turbulent couple’s interpersonal problematic parameters beyond the scope of vomiting their frustrations to the same sex individual of their camping buddies on the trip with only one minor other instance of a short-lived spat in an attempt pull in some kind of concerning emotion for either Blake or Jessica, but the scene falls flat and so does that thick air tension that repels any kind of bridging of the gap forcing Blake and Jessica to seem not like a couple with progressing relationship issues, but rather argumentative friends with benefits. On the other side of spectrum, Norah (Jennifer Karraz) and Kyle (Christopher McGahan of “Virus of the Dead”), portray parallel mirror opposites of a happy-go-lucky couple on the brink of engagement and parenthood and while the couple should be gleaming with affection, Norah and Kyle barely speak a couple of sentences to each other, marking their character profoundly shapeless and plain among the limited roles to root for survival.

Aside from not being able to relate to the characters, who more or less meander about asking each other what they should do or not do next, “No Way Out” can’t find a way out of the nonsensical design to shepherd audiences into the throes of character plight and make the hairpin turn toward revealing the abhorrent culprit of their situational terror. The story seems stuck in a rut in garnering not enough background or tidbits of intricacies to formulate a clear answer to the subtle hints being conveyed along the way about what’s unfolding before our eyes. Luckily, our brains start to take over, filling the gaps where needed, and coming to a haphazard conclusion that through the characters wavering suspense of the unknown encased around them, not everything is what it seems and that aspect really comes early on in the film, whittling down the complexity of the story to a low-effort thriller that can be solved by the time the four campers reach their terminus by car and have to hoof it aimlessly rest of the way. Unfocused editing of a fragmented story and misused ambience, such as the prolonged whooshing of highway cars when characters are supposed to be deep in the woods, added to the viewing friction. I liked the headspace of the story concept for “No Way Out,” where a shadowy, uncouth stalker sets a target on unsuspecting camping folk accessorized with a shrouded plot twist, but, ultimately, the execution flopped as a pitched tent overwrought thriller set in the icy, backwoods topography of Alaska.

From filmmakers Chris Levine and Joe Hamilton comes a brand a new backpacker thriller, “No Way Out,” premiering the last weekend of August in Alaska and then hitting VOD platforms in the next couple weeks, including Prime Video, Google Play, Pluto, Tubi, and more. Since “No Way Out” is a new, completed feature film and a digital screener was provided for review coverage, the typical A/V evaluation will not be done, but the debut of cinematographer De Gosh Reed’s hybrid found footage and observational shot style captures a pair of perspectives of not only an outsider, but also as the characters to join in as a terrified participant. Aforesaid, the English language audio mix is a bit wonky with some ambient missteps. The dialogue also comes and goes in an undiscernible pinpoint of depth that, at times, is trounced by the steadily vivacious soundtrack. The film felt very technically raw and unfinished, but, again, this is a digital screener of an unreleased film on the brink of debuting and maybe altered or adjusted for the premier/VOD. There were no special features included with the screener nor were there any bonus scenes during or after the credits. Though not my cup of flavored untamed tension tea, “No Way Out” has the bones to be a straight forward VOD thriller outlier despite being misshaped and disjointed around the particular edges.