Everest shares the same subject as Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air: the Mount Everest disaster of 1996, when eight people died in an attempt to climb, and descend, the mountain. But Everest offers something Krakauer's prose can't: The stunning imagery of the Himalayas. If you don't see Everest on the biggest screen possible, you might as well not see it at all—but if you do see it on a giant screen, the film's jaw-dropping visuals will provide some small sense of why otherwise reasonable people would risk their lives and spend tens of thousands of dollars to reach Everest's summit.

It's good Everest's visuals get that across, because little else about Everest does: Rushed and stilted, the film's a jumble of characters and tragedies that never coalesce into an engaging narrative. In a film where quick access to tanks of oxygen is a matter of life and death, it seems crass to say Everest is airless, but that is, in fact, how it feels: Flat and empty, it begins with optimism, ends in disaster, and ticks off requisite boxes along the way.