Grey, muddled filmmaking

If nothing else, The Grey is a triumph of sound design. Director Joe Carnahan (The A-Team) fills every moment with layers of aural trickery and elevating tension, building a wonderful sense of atmospheric dread. From the relentless howling of the arctic wind to the menacing growl of wild wolves, The Grey's sound mix is virtually flawless.

Where the film falters is in its consistency. At heart, The Grey is the bastard child of two wholly separate stories — a hard, gritty survival saga and a generic, by-the-numbers horror movie. Carnahan directs the movie with finesse, a marked improvement over previous efforts, but he fatally lacks the confidence to successfully combine the script's disparate elements, resulting in a wildly uneven movie that flips from B-horror to cheesy humor to portentous dialogue without skipping a beat.

When Carnahan is feeling more ambitious, we get debates about fatalism, religion and faith. His presentation of memories is at times almost impressionistic, like Terrence Malick by way of John Carpenter-style voice-overs set to a barrage of potent images.

In the trashier portions of the script, we get stock supporting characters, cheap horror movie logic and horribly out-of-place jump scares. The movie asks you to suspend your disbelief regarding the contingent of poorly rendered, bloodthirsty wolves. That's fine. Asking you to buy incredibly awful decision making and unrealistic character motivations in a drama? Not so much.

Working with the subpar material, Liam Neeson (Unknown) does the best possible job as the main character Ottway, who, as we're quickly made aware, is a man with a shameful past working a deadbeat job in Alaska.

Ottway goes on a routine plane trip that goes horribly, horribly wrong. He's soon stranded in the middle of the unforgiving wilderness, forced to fend off feral wolves and find civilization while supported by a crew of horror-movie stereotypes.

There's the family man, the horny bachelor, the asshole; you get the picture. Carnahan doesn't bother characterizing the rest of the crew beyond a forgettable campfire conversation scene or two. Troublingly, all of the characters are virtually indistinguishable from each other, both physically and in name — I had problems keeping the similar names straight throughout the movie.

It's a shame then, that there are moments of greatness scattered about. The film's standout set piece, a harrowing climb across an intimidatingly deep crevice, is a masterpiece in cinematic craft. The haunting, gorgeous cinematography in concert with the expertly applied creak and rip sound effects did more to scare than all of the jump scares combined.

VERDICT: The Grey overreaches to the point of incomprehensibility, compromising solid technical work and a good lead performance.

chzhang@umdbk.com