Friday, August 31, 2012

DESTINATION TRUTH - Hanging Coffins; Kazakh Monster

SyFy - Original Air Date: 8/14/12

Off to the Philippines to hunt for ghosts in hanging coffins, which have been put up the side of a mountain and hung on cave walls by locals in a very remote area near Sagata.  An arduous trek takes Josh & co. to the ancient graveyard, which appears to still be used.  Naturally, they hear weird sounds and see shadows; even Josh is freaked out.  The "groan" in an area with animals and creaking wood near the coffins don't impress me (wood settles).  Nor do I think much of the EVPs or camera malfunctions.  Nor am I impressed with the misty "figure" that shows up in one shot. Malfunctioning camera & local atmospherics, more likely.  If this is one of their most compelling pieces of evidence, I'm deeply unimpressed.

Then it's tromping through Kazakhstan to find the local bigfoot, Kiyik Adam.  In the dark the team catches some eye shine, but is it bigfoot or a bear?  Whistles turn out to be from a bird, and a small thermal hit a small animal, definitely not bigfoot.  A larger thermal hit could be bear, elk, or...?  Oddly, their expert in the US doesn't offer a guess on the eye shine.  "It's easy to imagine there may be something to these stories," Josh concludes.

How you liked this season of Destination Truth depends on your tolerance for Josh, Ryder, and the rest.  The episodes follow the standard model: go to exotic place, interact with the locals, eat strange food, and tromp around in the dark looking for monsters/ghosts.  Sadly, as with all supernatural shows, DT is long on commercial break scares and short on actual ... Truth.  I enjoy these characters and will stick with them, but I'm not really expecting them to find anything.  And I was really disappointed that their "best evidence" looks more like a camera malfunction or operator error.  Call me when you get a picture of a monster that you saw _before_ you checked the tape/film/etc.

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