Hypothermia

Good story, good acting, bad monster. The monster was literally hilarious. Next time, please leave something to the imagination.

An American horror; A story about a man hoping to spend a relaxing holiday fishing by a frozen lake with his family finds the peace and quiet shattered by beasts both human and marine. The film starts with some promise with an eerie and mysterious setting, good photography, and growing tension. However, the characters are a bit flimsy and when a boorish ice fisherman appears, exaggerated to bad effect, it rapidly descends into creature feature territory and low budget design and the tension dwindles. The ending dodders to a dud.

"We're gonna need a bigger hole." Ray (Rooker) and his family are together again for another ice fishing trip. While they are out on the ice enjoying themselves another father and son show up and quickly start to annoy Ray and family. When they notice something "as big as a sturgeon" they come up with a plan to catch it. When it starts to attack them the plan changes and saving lives are the priority. I am a fan of the cheesy sci/fy channel movies, the over the top acting and bad effects make them fun to watch, going in I was expecting that level of film making from this one. I have to say this was in most cases better then that level. The acting wasn't good but wasn't awful either. I can actually say that about most of the movie. While the movie isn't "good" it doesn't really do anything to annoy or make you want to stop watching. The movie seemed to know what it was and didn't try to do too much, which is a rare thing lately. The only exception to that was the last two minutes, without trying to give anything a way it was a HUGE cop-out ending and the horrible beast was pretty much a dude in a swamp thing costume you can find at Walmart...other then the ending though this wasn't terrible. Overall, not as bad as I expected and if you are into cheesy movies this one will do. I give it a C+.

It's always interesting to see how quickly a movie can go from promising to a great lump of awful. Hypothermia must have sounded pretty good as a pitch; a family is trapped on a frozen lake by a monster beneath the ice. There's a lot of possibilities there, not that any of them would be explored in the little more than seventy minutes that this movie takes to careen from potentially interesting, all the way down to sucky-ville where it crashes with a spectacular flopping sound. It doesn't just go there, it boards a roller coaster so the trip to Horrible is fast, and you're into before you know it. The movie starts out decently with believable, if uninteresting, family interactions; the quick introduction of the looming threat and then the insertion of obnoxious strangers to complicate the situation. But then...then comes the monster part. Where it degenerates to from there is best summed up by the moment when two women, bloodied and having witnessed multiple deaths, are walking across the ice with the monster threatening from beneath, and the older woman says "Just ignore it". And I kinda wish I was making that up...but I'm not.

It's great to see Michael Rooker being given a leading role, and he is always good, but Blanche Baker literally scowls, and glares peevishly through an undeveloped and underwritten role as his wife. It remains a mystery to me why she would act annoyed, or simply irritated, about her husband's interest in finding them a safe way out and she gets really miffed because, if possible, he wants to kill the rampaging fish-man-monster who is killing her loved ones. She looks seriously aggrieved that he is trying to do anything. As for Amy Chang, playing their son's girlfriend - the kindest thing I can say about her performance is that she gives "terrible" it's new poster child.

As for the monster... well I'll be charitable and guess they spent a whole seventeen dollars on the suit and then hired the first performer who said "I know how monsters act, they roar like this: Roar. Roar." It wouldn't be out of place in a super-cheap amateur film from the 1950's. The old Creature From The Black Lagoon looks like a hundred million dollar special effect in comparison. But Cheapy Fish-Man-Monster does roar. A lot. It flaps it's fish-lips and makes noise (okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration - it doesn't have lips; those would have cost an added fifty cents). Some of the bloody FX on the victims are quite good but then others are distractingly poor, like the effects artist was in the restroom and they didn't want to wait so someone's kid brother visiting the set took over. I'm sure the kid meant well, but still.

And how to describe the "dramatic" moment when the mom talks the monster out of attacking by explaining that they think of this place as "Home"; which, apparently, your average fish-man understands perfectly well so long as you talk to him like an adult; don't raise your voice, look slightly peeved, and tell him you know he's just protecting his natural territory (which they have no reason to suspect, and it's not his territory anyway). And I wish I was making that up...but I'm not. When they just get up and walk away I immediately thought that's what I should have done before I started watching this demoralizing catastrophe. And I wish I'd made this whole thing up...but I didn't.

This movie has just started on the Horror Channel. It seemed familiar and it was. I suffered the pain of this dark (lighting) bleak (Plot and script) a couple of years ago and I am still wearing the plasters. The three stars are Michael Rooker who was ever reliable but what he was doing in this cheap drivel? I will never know. New furniture?? The icy desolate waste is probably a metaphor or the commissioning suits minds although adequate for the movie.

I cannot go too far into all the performances but the supporting cast were keen if nothing else.

I have also have seen some pretty cheap effects when watching Z rated creature features, and some are very good, but this one really had me in stitches. Spend £20 and make it look like £9. Someone is missing a wet suit and flippers.

Even for hard core horror fans (we have watched some rubbish) give it a wide one unless you want to chuckle at the rubber beastie.