Ice Road Terror

Up in Alaska, two trucker buddies and a pretty geologist deliver a load of explosives to a diamond mine. When they arrive they find bloody carnage all around. Turns out the miners unearthed some kind of dinosaur lizard thing and it's not happy. A cheesy made-for-TV movie that's enjoyable in spite of its flaws. This is in large part due to the main actors. Dylan Neal and Ty Olsson play the truckers. The two play well off one another and make for believable buddies. Olsson gets the unfortunate task of playing the stoic hero and seems to be taking this whole thing entirely too seriously at times. Neal is the best part of the movie, giving a clichéd macho douchebag character some charisma. Cutie Brea Grant is very likable and manages to rise above the material quite well. The rest of the cast is made up of bland Canadian actors; the most recognizable of which is Michael Hogan from Battlestar Galactica. The special effects are, not surprisingly, terrible. The monster is a cheap CGI cartoon. The movie's not scary in the least and it barely tries to be. The horror elements in this are worthy of the low IMDb score. The action scenes aren't impressive, either. Really the overall production is of poor quality. Still, it's one of the better SyFy movies I've seen because it has likable leads and a healthy dose of "so bad it's good" humor. Keep in mind, most SyFy movies are bottom-of-the-barrel crap so my score for this is grading on a curve.

I've come across some ridiculous movies but a film produced in 2011 in HD of this level should not be allowed. Special effects that are actually worse than the film "The blob" 1958. I thought it was going to turn into a comedy, waiting for the lizard to start break dancing to Micheal Jackson's black or white!!! On a serious note though its not a bad film if the budget was $10000 Nice trucks and some very nice Case machinery. You have to see it. Ice Road truckers meets Jurassic park Very laughable. If your a fan of man eating iguanas its certainly one for you. Acting is very borderline but with the material given I'm sure any mainstream actor would not have been affordable

Seeing Ice Road Terror was not that mind blowing. The film actually had decent acting, somewhat good action, and a simple plot. But overall it was nothing special.

This film is basically about a company up in Alaska that awakens a prehistoric predator "dinosaur". A couple truckers then try to take hazardous materials up to the area where the beast is, not knowing that it exists.

I actually thought the human characters were good in this film. They really seemed like truckers and were characters you could get behind. Also the girl who was the scientist was pretty good too. Surprising because usually in movies like these the humans are all cliché.

The "dinosaur" in this film is weird in that it really is a big lizard. I do not know of any predatory dinosaur that runs around on four legs. It was pretty standard CGI for this beast and it got some decent action but nothing special.

The story is pretty easy to follow.

I thought that I got tricked because they showed a carnataurus on the box and some dvds even had a tyrannosaurus on them even though neither of those dinosaurs are in this film. The only creature in this film is the giant lizard. So I don't know why they had to false advertise this film.

Pretty standard SYFY film. I do not strongly recommend it, but it isn't bad either. Watch it on a rainy day.

If you are familiar with the movies the SyFy channel produces, this being one of them, you are probably understandably prepared for the worst. I certainly was, but I was amazed that this movie proved to be even worse than I thought it would be! For starters, the creature effects are awful, done with cut-rate CGI. The rest of the movie looks extremely cheap as well, despite the bulk of the movie taking place in the isolated wilderness. But what really sinks this movie is the extremely incompetent writing and direction. There is poor continuity, like when the creature is stabbed in the eye but later is shown with no wound to that eye. (Also, characters several times jump from one location to another in seconds IN THE SAME SCENE!) Even if you watch this during a lazy weekend when you don't want to think, you'll find your intelligence being insulted.

I did expect something worse than what I got with Ice Road Terror, though that is not saying much. It is a pretty rubbish and ridiculous movie, but I do think with stuff like Titanic II, Mega Piranha, Alien vs. Hunter, Almighty Thor, Super Tanker, Quantum Apocalypse, 2010: Moby Dick, Battle of Los Angeles and The Apocalypse that SyFy have done much worse.

Although the bad outweigh the good, there are some assets that are halfway decent, some nice scenery, a likable enough performance from Brea Grant and the cabin sequence, which tries hard to give the characters some credibility.

On the other hand, Ice Road Terror is a rather scrappy looking film, scenery aside. The editing is hackneyed and doesn't make much sense going from one scene to another, and the monster graphics while not as bad as other efforts from SyFy look very cheap. Not to mention the CGI, especially with the truck sliding and skidding over the hole in the ice, which look very half-baked.

The script is terrible, with very cheesy and repetitive dialogue further disadvantaged by wooden line delivery, and the story is predictable with one too many ridiculous scenes such as how the monster actually managed to get on top of the truck and the idea of a monster having a 7th sense. Pacing is another issue, nothing much engages making the film seem dull, and some of the more action-y parts have a rushed feel to them. The characters are bland, despite the cabin sequence's best efforts, any character development is too brief and too late, while the monster is lacking almost completely in menace.

When it comes to the acting, I liked Grant, but didn't care at all for anybody else. Again, I've seen worse, but the acting generally comes across as forced to me. All in all, I've seen worse, but a few decent things aren't enough to save Ice Road Terror from being rubbish. 3/10 Bethany Cox