Steep | DVD Review

If you think Schadenfreude is a dish best served snowy-cold, Steep is for you.

Viewers will get many an ‘ooh… glad that’s not me’ moment in this documentary which retraces the history of extreme skiing in the U.S and is narrated by Six Feet Under’s Peter Krause. The film is visually flabbergasting, probably due to first-time feature director Mark D. Obenhaus, who is trained as a cinematographer.

The problem is, Steep comes off a little like an educational video. It tries to enlist and entice its viewers to the cult of the cliff, what with all interviewees gushing about the unique and almost mystical powers rewarded them by such a death-defying experience. At the same time, the juxtaposition between these praises and the anxiety-inducing clips of the dangers of losing control in the harsh elements (one of the skiers featured in the film, Doug Coombs, actually dies from a ski accident before the film was finished) is a little too hard to swallow. The viewer is thrown into a lurch. Should I want to extreme ski or not?

Well, even if the viewer is not quite ready to go out and purchase their own exclusive helicopter ride to the scariest tips of the Alps or Alaskan ranges, they can certainly subliminally enjoy the experience. The film is anything but lacking in several shots that try as much as possible to put the viewer into the thrust of catapulting down slopes with impressive skiing shots.

The uneasy balance between exhilaration and revulsion didn’t seem to work for critics or audiences. The film received mixed but generally disappointing reviews, and the total North American gross barely reached a quarter million.

The making-of documentary is fairly enlightening as it explains some of how the up close and fast shots of 55-degree ski runs were achieved. Interviews with skiers Ingrid Backstrom and Andrew McLean as well as Obenhaus mainly repeat what was said during the actual film itself—in a documentary, these talking-head interviews merely look like repetitive deleted scenes. Two photo slideshows are also included. The commentary option by Obenhause similarly seem redundant in a documentary, non-fiction film.

If you are an avid skier or thrill seeker—at least via film—then this will be worth about half of the time that the film actually takes. Fast-forward to the exhilarating points, get your kicks, and move on.

Movie rating – 1.5

Disc Rating – 2.5