The Ice Demon

Ok so this isn't any hidden classic and in the end it was no great shakes. It probably would've earned another star from me were it just subtitled.

The English dubbing is just atrocious! It takes the mood right out of the movie. I'm sure it at least had a creepy vibe in its original language with subtitles...but the dubbing removes this completely. It sounds very unnatural. One would think voice actors who are being paid to dub English voices would have some skills in this department but nope, not here. They may as well have been reading the owner's manual for a toaster. Subtitles are preferable folks, at least give us the option!

I stumbled upon the 2021 Russian horror movie "The Ice Demon" by random chance here in 2022, and of course with it being a horror movie that I hadn't already seen, then I needed no persuasion to sit down and watch this movie. And I must admit that the title and the cover was interesting.

Writers Natalya Dubovaya, Ivan Kapitonov, Artem Mikhailov and Svyatoslav Podgaevskiy had every chance to impress and entertain me here with this movie, as I had never even heard about it.

But lo and behold, what a swing and a miss of a movie. The movie's cover was just blatantly false advertisement for the movie, as it virtually had nothing to do with the contents of the movie. And while I managed to stick with the movie to the cold, bitter end, I have to admit that I was not the least bit entertained.

The storyline in "The Ice Demon" was just downright utter rubbish. This was nothing more than a slow paced drama laced with horror elements. And if you sit down to watch "The Ice Demon" with the intentions of watching a horror movie, like I did, you will be sorely disappointed. The storyline and the narrative was pointless, slow paced and just had zero appeal.

I will say, however, that the production value of the movie was good and it definitely felt like a proper movie, where it just as easily could have come off as a highschool arts and crafts project. But the lack of anything even resembling an interesting storyline was just overshadowing the production value of the movie.

The acting performances were adequate, I suppose. Not that I really cared much about the characters or the dialogue in the movie, because they were every bit as pointless and bland as the storyline itself.

My rating of "The Ice Demon" lands on a two out of ten stars.

The movie is a thriller that takes place when a family member who was suddenly destroyed by his father's sudden disappearance barely accepts and heals a new family. A stepfather devoted to his family, a mother who is pathologically obsessed with his stepfather in a domestic state, and an unknown being seeking everyone's soul, Kasha makes constant choices across life and death among them.

It makes the audience think about what the true meaning of the family is in the confrontation between the unknown beings that continue their lives through hate and fights between characters and the protagonist.

I lost interest almost immediately and just left it on while I played chess and looked on eBay. It just seemed like a really boring movie to me. I was glad when it finished.

This movie was good, it wasn't the absolute best I've seen. But it had it's scares. It had it's suspenseful and eerie moments. I have watched Russian horror movies before and most of them are unique in their own way.

I do think that this movie is worth a watch if you like dark "snowy" horror movies with demonic elements. I don't think that there is bad acting or really a bad storyline, only some things in the plot that can be quite confusing at first, but you will get the meaning behind it the more you watch the movie.