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YMMV / Avalanche

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  • Angst? What Angst?: In the span of a day, David loses the ski resort he fought so hard to build, becomes responsible for the injuries and deaths of numerous innocent lives, and loses his mother in a rather brutal manner. Hard as he is, you'd expect him to be a little broken by all of this. It's even lampshaded by Caroline and Nick. To be fair, he's broken enough at least to solemnly admit that he was to blame for all of it, which Caroline admits is something he's never done before.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
    • The randomly appearing cheerleader-esque girl in the kitchen during the gas explosion. What was she doing there?
    • The whole scene showing the emergency response crew's exiting the town going completely awry, including a police car completely losing control and smashing into an unlucky pedestrian and a store window, complete with Bullet Time. Did we need to have a scene showing how incompetent this town's emergency service's were? (It's possible that this was an attempt to foreshadow what would ultimately be Florence's (and nearly Caroline's) undoing.)
  • Designated Hero: David. His own stubbornness is why the eponymous avalanche is so devastating, and he doesn't seem to have any visible concern about anyone except Caroline (and maybe his mother). He accepts responsibility for the mess in the end, but he doesn't seem very torn up over it. Let's not forget how disturbingly possessive he is of Caroline.
  • Narm:
    • The chaos that ensues as the emergency vehicles respond to the avalanche; especially the aforementioned out-of-control police car that crashes into the man and the store. After the horrific avalanche sequence, the cars and their drivers somehow failing to leave town without causing even more chaos is just downright comical.
    • Martin's death is quite bizarre, with an electric shock somehow sending him shooting off the chairlift diagonally so he misses the landing pad below him.
    • The kitchen scenes during the avalanche, thanks to the over-the-top chef costumes the actors are wearing, the ridiculous ways they all get thrown around (somehow getting hit by the snow sends them flying across the room), and the aforementioned cheerleader who is in there for no apparent reason during the gas explosion.
    • The death of Florence can be seen as the writers trying a bit too hard to tug at your heartstrings. Did she die thanks to the avalanche or the dining room gas leak? No, she died when the person driving the ambulance she's in careens off a cliff. Then, as if to drive the point home, it blows up. Subtle.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • In the middle of all the rather silly disaster scenes, there's one truly gasp worthy moment when a cook gets a pot of boiling sauce poured onto his face.
    • Also, the human crushes that ensue as the avalanche approaches, with people being literally trampled.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Robert Forster spent most of his career as a largely unrecognized character actor, but is now much better known for his roles in Jackie Brown and Breaking Bad.
  • Special Effect Failure: The movie frequently uses undisguised Styrofoam blocks as stand-ins for snow.
  • Strangled by the Red String: Caroline and David are implied to get back together at the end, despite the fact David's behaviour is borderline obsessive towards her. Ditto with Nick, who Caroline has even less chemistry with, but is implied to have had intercourse with.
  • Too Cool to Live: Cool might be stretching it, but minor character and Jason's ski-lift mate Martin ensures that Jason is gets down from the ski-lift safe and sound... only for his own attempt at getting down to be botched by an electric shock and result in him falling to his death.
  • Why Would Anyone Take Him Back?: After David's stubbornness puts a lot of blood on his hands, the implication that the movie ends with that he and Caroline may get back together down the line is just really unbelievable.


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