The Canyon (2009)

Just what I expected

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This movie was so cheesy I had register to this site just to get this off my chest. Horrible movie. The plot, stuck in the grand canyon. Boring enough right? Well hey you know what the movie 127 hours pulled it off so a boring plot isn't my problem with this movie. Seems like it almost had potential but it was so unrealistic I couldn't take it. The girl gets attacked by wolves;one tackles her to the ground face to face and somehow doesn't bite her in the neck or face? In a following scene she gets attacked again, tackled to the ground, but only gets bit in the leg? Then she stabs the wolf only for it to die instantly? After watching this I wished my girlfriend would suffocate me too. It really trips me out that you people write good reviews for movies like this. Someone please explain to me how people are rating this 7/10?

As a veteran of nine expeditions down the Grand Canyon I was skeptical of whether one would get the feel of what the Canyon is like in its more remote areas considering that it wasn't filmed there. I'm happy to report that with the overview shots of the actual Grand Canyon coupled with what seems to have been carefully selected non-Grand Canyon sites to shoot this movie, I completely recognized the Grand Canyon I'm so familiar with. The slot canyon the honeymooning couple explored not long after the opening scenes suggested strongly to me the slot canyon at the end of Deer Creek just before the creek plunges over Deer Creek Falls into the Colorado River and other locations reminded me of some of my other favorite Grand Canyon sites like National Canyon, Shinumo Creek (near Bass Trail) and the Silver Grotto of Shinumo Wash (not technically in the Grand Canyon proper, but upstream of it in Marble Canyon, still in GCNP). So for someone seeking a vicarious look at what the more remote parts of the Grand Canyon might look like you should appreciate this film for that.(spoilers to follow)That said, the only thing I can say about the plot devices is that the only people who could be portrayed making the horrendously bad decisions might be a clueless couple from a big Mid- Western city who've never been in the wild before. They are made to make serious error in judgment after another until you almost feel as though there's no way that they had ever had any hope of getting out alive from the outset. I almost felt as though the movie makers were making a caricature of clueless city dwellers caught in the wild in over their heads.But if the bad decisions that seemed almost calculated to doom the couple weren't unrealistic enough of a plot device, the main villains of the movie were. The early days of the Grand Canyon as a park saw a program of predator elimination that resulted in an explosion of the deer population on the Kaibab Plateau that lead to a very harsh lesson in trying to control nature by artificial means as the deer population subsequently crashed. The apex predators including puma and Mexican gray wolves were all but completely eliminated from the Canyon and recent efforts to re-introduce the Mexican gray wolf have thus far not been successful. In the nine trips I've made into the canyon representing over 4 calendar months total time I've never seen or even heard the presence of wolves in any part of the canyon. Thus the lack of the presence of the animals in the Canyon makes the portrayal of a pack of vicious wolves attacking the couple very unlikely, but even less likely is the possibility that the species that might have been encountered there by some slim chance, the Mexican gray wolf, much smaller than their Canadian cousins and a rather shy animal around humans, would have chosen to mount a persistent assault on a pair of adult humans. I rate this movie a 5, an average of the superlative effort to realistically paint an accurate picture of the splendor of the Grand Canyon I love, contrasted against the abysmally misguided plot devices that doom what story there is to enjoy about the movie. There are better venues to see the Grand Canyon for its scenery and splendor, any number of beautifully shot documentaries, some of them by the GCNP itself. And if that only whets your appetite for what there is to see, go there yourself in person, that's why we have National Parks in the first place. But if you do go, take it from me that you'd have little to worry about from the so far non-existent wolf population in the Canyon.

The wilderness can be a great place to visit, when everything is going okay. But introduce some unexpected problems, and an excellent adventure, far removed from other people, morphs into a nightmare. It's a story premise that has a long history in cinema, and it's the premise on which "The Canyon" is based. An attractive newlywed couple hires an old backwoods coot (played by Will Patton) to guide them through the back-country of the Grand Canyon. Everything goes well ... for awhile.The script's characters seem credible. But the plot lacks creative imagination. One particular adversity propels the film's second half, which goes on and on, tediously. Either the editor needed to chop off some of the plot repetition, or the writer needed to introduce additional, more varied, adversities.Further, the story's inciting incident, which involves a reptile, is not remotely credible. And the characters react to this event in ways that add to their misery. What would films be without characters who make stupid decisions?Casting is acceptable. Acting is okay until near the end when one performance becomes almost laughable. Sound effects and background music are fine.Scenery is spectacular, helped along by competent color cinematography. And the final scene is arguably the best scene in the entire film. As the camera zooms out, viewers get a stunning visual perspective, one of the best such perspectives I have ever seen in any film.An unimaginative and at times silly plot renders the story somewhat tiresome and tedious. But this is partially offset by terrific visuals, the most impressive of which is right at the very end.

If you're looking for something with the look and feel of an almost-major motion picture and the writing of a really boring b movie, this is definitely the movie for you.The first thing that struck me about this film was that it was shot quite well. It had all the hallmarks of a professionally done, decent-budget piece: good cinematography, subtle and appropriate background music, and believable actors who obviously hadn't just been picked up at the 7 Eleven. Even the writing in the beginning did a good job of setting an interesting tone, albeit one that, as others have said, we have all seen a thousand times before. I personally don't mind that sort of redundancy in itself. There are only a finite number of plots available to any writer, and if the details are different and the film is well done I'll watch it without whining for originality.But then the characters started DOING things. Honestly, I thought about it, and I really don't think these people made a single decision in the entire course of the film that was not completely ridiculous to the point of mental deficiency. I don't want to spoil it, but remember my words as you watch: this is simply not how people would behave (or at least I really, really hope not). Nothing they do makes any sense whatsoever. It is clear that whoever wrote this has absolutely no understanding of human behavior, cause and effect, or the need as a writer to put yourself in the position of your characters so that you can develop a realistic story line.Nor, it seems, does the writer have any concept at all of human relationships. The people in this movie are supposed to be married, but for most of the film they seem more like roommates. Has this writer ever even seen a married couple? It would have been more believable if they had met on the tour bus on the way there! The script gives them no opportunity to show any real emotion toward each other, and almost none about their situation. It is really quite boring.On top of that there are some utterly absurd (and offensive) happenings with wolves, as well as the equally unrealistic ability of the characters to deal with exposure to the desert elements for days on end without food or water with hardly a single complaint. Just ridiculous.Anyway, this movie had a lot of potential that was ruined by a writer who obviously lacks both life experience and the imagination to invent it. The only cure for him may be to stick him out in the desert for a few days in a similar situation so he can see how a real person would react. I for one think we should try it.