The Thaw

It had some brief moments of entertainment, but overall it was Luke warm at best. The producers must've blown their budget on hiring Val Kilmer to fill some dead spots in the movie. Kilmer kind of walks through this movie and plays a dopey doc that wants these parasites to infest mankind just to make a point about global warming. Supposedly this movie takes place very cold (or somewhere in Canada.) Unfortunately, there isn't a lick of smoke we can see exiting their mouths in a supposed subzero climate. As a matter of fact, there was barely a drop of snow to be seen anywhere. Oh yeah, global warming. Throw in a bunch of 30 something year old grad students that are supposedly the most brilliant of their class and viola! LOL! Whoever the actress was that played Kilmer's daughter, should be given a Golden Turkey award for most pathetic portrayal of a confused daughter to a wacky mad scientist. I mean bad!! This movie delivers thrills for a buck at Red Box, but it's not worth a penny more.

The End.

THE THAW is an unashamed rip-off of THE THING, with the action shifted to Alaska rather than the Arctic and a prehistoric parasite rather than a shapeshifting alien as the menace. Other than that, it's business as usual, with a small cast whittled down by an unknown enemy and paranoia erupting all over the shop.

Given that this is a low-budget B-movie starring a mostly unknown cast, I thought it was surprisingly enjoyable. The director and writer focus on the sense of impending menace and the creepy atmosphere for the most part, and it works well; some parts are genuinely unnerving. There are the inevitable gross-out and medical scenes, but these are handled well; the gore effects are limited but more effective as a result. Even the expected CGI isn't too shabby.

The idea of a parasitical organism has been explored quite a lot in recent years - such as in the memorably creepy found-footage horror, THE BAY - and it's always one I find pretty disturbing, and that's no exception here. Add in a value-for-money Val Kilmer and you have a decent B-movie for a change.

Why was Val Kilmer in this one? It makes no sense to me. I know he's growing old and his last castings were not the best, but still.

The film is a classic isolated monster/contagion movie, featuring most clichés you would expect. Brave and good looking chick, check; black and Asian representation, check; cowardly hysterical jerk, check; scary but completely implausible premise, check; mad scientist, check; brave guy that saves the girl, check. Actually, the formulaic concepts were so absurdly respected that when there was a scene where they would cut some guy's arm off to stop the contagion, they didn't actually show the cut. Same goes for when the girl had to strip to check for contagion. No problem showing flesh crawling bugs, though.

I could debate the reasons why the film made no sense to no end, but I will tell you just this: prehistoric bugs that come out of the thawing ice will NOT make me think harder about global warming. This theme is largely responsible for why the movie sucked so much.

Bottom line: couldn't even give it an average 7. The effects and the atmosphere (if you ignore the actors completely) are the only two good things happening here.

After reading some of the comments on this movie, I was more than pleasantly surprised at how good this smart little bug feature was A definite step up from the usual B movie sci-fi horror crap that's been out in the cinemas this year. There were decent squirm effects and gore and a nice touch of tongue in cheek humour too. The cinematography was cool and eerie and the brooding atmosphere had echoes of The Thing and Near Dark (although it's nothing like The Thing) I thought the acting and direction were assured. I Liked the twist at the end too. Don't listen to some of the other reviewers on this forum as I doubt that they have actually seen the film.

Although it may resemble "The Thing" and "The Last Winter" the resemblance is superficial; those both relied on the audience feeling things (paranoia and dread, respectively)

Actually its closer to "Ghost Rig" and "Deep Freeze" and surpasses both easily. Gorehounds will probably be satisfied with many cringe-inducing scenes of which some almost enter gross-out territory. With critters burrowing into people that should be expected.

The characters however are almost caricatures and it quickly becomes apparent, with one exception I'm not spoiling, who will survive or die. That made the story kinda predictable but if you're into splatter flicks it might be worth renting.