Terreur dans l'Arctique

Gee, I wonder what reality show gave them the idea for this one. Oddly enough, this flick has its moments, unlike that pointless show.

The monster makes its debut pretty early on, and seems to either resent construction workers in remote areas of Alaska, or else it just gets a kick out of exterminating humans. There's no shortage of gruesome bloodlettting, and lots of stray body parts lying around. Since it's a SyFy offering, that's really not unexpected. It's designed prehistoric and roars almost as often as it kills somebody. Still, it makes for a good monster, and decides to chase two (believe it or not) ice trucker guys for hundreds of miles.

Eventually, the ice roaders make their stand against the thing at a conveniently-located cabin, the only one for a hundred miles in any direction. The cabin portion is the best sequence, with the characters even getting some brief back stories, enough so that the viewer cares who lives or dies.

Acting is pretty good, and the action maintains a high pace throughout. Not a bad watch for fans of these kinds of films who aren't asking for much but some wild monster on the loose madness.

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.

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.

There are some interesting movies coming from the SyFy Channel - "Ice Road Terror", however, was not one of them. This movie was bad in practically every sense of the word.

The story in "Ice Road Terror" is about some miners who accidentally blast into some subterranean cavern where they unleash a prehistorical reptile. And it is up to a couple of truck drivers and a researcher to put a stop to the prehistoric terror.

Right, well that was a fairly generic storyline for a monster movie. Taken right out of the 'how to make a prehistoric monster movie for dummies' book. Not only was there so many holes in the plot, but so many things in the movie were bad as well.

First of all, if a prehistoric reptile was trapped inside a cave, what has it been eating? And given its size, it would have had a lot of food available. Which leads me to the next thing that comes to mind, was the reptile frozen beneath the ice? If so, why would a single explosion thaw it up and render it completely mobile, not to mention bringing it back to life?

Given the title of the movie, then this alleged ice road that the truck drivers were driving on was solid enough to sustain the weight of two loaded trucks, and would have been in use for awhile, as the mining site already had stuff up there. But still, the reptile broke through the ice to snatch up a man. But wait, it gets better, as the reptile does this, the ice shown is mere inches thick. How could this possibly support the weight of loaded rigs? Wow, that was an epic mistake.

One thing that really had me puzzled was just how did the reptile manage to catch a ride on top of the truck? How did it get up there? Even more impressively, how did it get up there without anyone noticing. And while we are on the topic of the top of the truck, how did Jack manage to get up there when he clearly fell down to the ice road while the truck was in motion? I guess both Jack and the prehistoric reptile are magicians of sorts and know how to teleport.

And now that we know that prehistoric lizards enjoy scaling things and being on top of roofs, then just how did the wooden building manage to support the weight of the prehistoric reptile when it was on the roof of the porch. That was just some very impressive Innuit craftsmanship right there.

The most memorable and stupid scenes of the movie would have to be when Jack used the gasoline pump as a flamethrower. That was just unbelievable. I never new that gas pumps nozzles sprayed out gasoline with that much force to be able to make such a fan of flame. That just had me laughing out loud.

The CGI in the movie were below adequate, because the reptile was really fake most of the time, and I bet I would be running for my life too if I saw such a horribly animated CGI prehistoric lizard come running towards me.

The one good thing that "Ice Road Terror" had working for it - aside from this hilarious movie title - was the acting. People actually did good jobs with their given roles, despite having everything stacked against them in forms of a horrible script, an abysmal CGI animated prehistoric lizard, and one flaw after another through the movie.

"Ice Road Terror" is the embodiment of low budget B-movies, and something that is often seen coming from the SyFy Channel. SyFy Channel do manage to impress every now and then with some great movie, "Ice Road Terror" wasn't at least bit interesting. However, you might find some enjoyment in the movie if you are fan of these low budget monster movies where the only horror is how fake whatever creature is in the movie is.

As bad as this film is, there was a germ of something better.

A road crew frees a hungry dino-monster in Alaska. The survivors do everything to escape the beast in their ice road trucks.

Sounds kind of cool if you're thinking of a certain similarly named TV show.

However, this is syfy and the terror takes place on half melted roads for only the first hour or so.

With a bit of imagination. style and real location work, Ice Road Terror could have been a nifty little gem.

But then, this is syfy.