Erebus: Into The Unknown, film review: A fascinating story but reconstructions fall short

(12A) Peter Berger, Charlotte Purdy, 68 mins

Edwin Wright and Tama Jarman in ‘Erebus: Into the Unknown’

This documentary tells a fascinating story in a very heavy-handed way. Its subject is the aftermath of an Air New Zealand crash in Antartica in 1979.

Various local police officers were sent from New Zealand into the white wilderness to retrieve the bodies from Flight 901 on Mount Erebus.

Their testimony in talking-head interviews is intriguing but the dramatic reconstructions of the expedition verge on the inept.

The film-makers construct the film in a similar way to Touching the Void but fail to create a sense of tension, or to match visually what the interviewees tell them.