The Thaw (2009)

Before I reach 700 posts on my main blog, I decided I was past due for a review here. This hasn’t been the best of months for me so far. Started off with a bad case of writers block, which I managed to get past. No sooner than I did that, my computer died on me yet again. This time the power supply gave out, just after the warrenty of course. It has been fixed but Windows doesn’t want to boot now, so that is just another problem to deal with. What can I say? My computer hates me. In order to save some wear and tear on my desktop computer, I decided to get a laptop. I plan on using it for my writing only, so that should save a few hours off my desktop at least each day. Hopefully I won’t run into problems with this computer. Anyway, I was having trouble deciding on what to watch for here. Eventually I went with The Thaw.

Dr. Kruipen (Val Kilmer) is a scientist who is studying the affects of global warming in Canada. While observing a polar bear eating, they shoot it with a tranquilizer. Before they can do anything with the bear though, they discover that the bear had been eating a woolly mammoth that was frozen in the ice. The ice has melted just enough to expose part of the mammoth to the open air. Two days later and the bear is dead. Dr. Kruipen’s team is either dead as well or on their way. Would could have caused this to happen? From there we learn of Kruipen’s daughter, Evelyn (Martha MacIsaac), who is also interested in global warming. She also wants to talk to her dad about her mothers passing. Dad doesn’t want her coming to him, but of course she does anyway. She travels up to where he is along with three other students, Atom (Aaron Ashmore), Federico (Kyle Schmid) and Ling (Steph Song), who have been selected to join the Doctor in his research. They soon discover what it was that made the first team sick.

It take a while before we find out what it is that is making people sick. it is hinted at in the opening credits, but we don’t know the true nature of it until pretty late into the movie. What I didn’t understand at all is why bring in all new people? The story was set up fine the way it was before having all new people show up. Maybe they just couldn’t afford Val Kilmer for an entire movie. I know The Thaw isn’t the first movie to use the there is something bad in the ice idea, but I have never bought into it. Maybe I am wrong, but I just don’t see something coming back to life after being frozen for thousands of years, or longer. It doesn’t take away from the movie for me, unless the movie itself is just bad as well. I can’t really call this movie bad, but some of the things the characters do happen to be very stupid. Would you put your arm on a dead bear that is in a lab? Would you not notice a bunch of bugs bitting you? Would you take the gun away from the guy that keeps saying he will shoot you once he drops it? It was stupid little things like that that was starting to annoy me a lot. Add in that it is a slow movie, it made for close to boring movie as well. It isn’t all bad of course. Once things do start to pick up it does manage to keep that level of things going for the rest of the movie. It does start to get somewhat gory. If you have a fear of bugs, this is one that will get to you in that way.

Not a lot of effects but the ones that are there are very good. We get to see bugs crawling around inside people and animals. An arm gets chopped off, which was probably the best effect of them all. Not many to choose from, but at least they look great. The acting was also pretty good. Val Kilmer only has a small part compaired to most others. I happened to like Martha MacIsaac, but not everyone did. I was a little surprised that this movie went direct to DVD. While Martha may not be a big name, she has been in some well known films. Val isn’t as big as he once was, but everyone probably knows who he is at least. I felt Steph Song was pretty much wasted in this movie. They didn’t give her much to do. You can also find Viv Leacock and Anne Marie DeLuise.

I don’t mind a slow paced movie, but for The Thaw it didn’t work as well as it should have. There is no real setup for the students that show up. They just walk into this and have to figure out how to deal with it. We never learn what it is they were being called up to the research site for. It would have been nice to see them doing some research before being thrown into the frying pan. Or better yet, just stuck with the research team that was already there. They could have told the same story without adding more people to the mix. Val Kilmer’s character comes off a bit cold at times, but what they have him do at the end of the movie was really pushing things. Even to the point where some people felt it was too much of a stretch. Even though I am surprised this movie didn’t get some kind of release to theaters, I’m glad I didn’t spend the extra money to see it in a theater. I have watched much worse than The Thaw, but it just didn’t work for me. They might be limited to what they can do for a horror movie when it comes to the subject of global warming, but I think they could have done better than this.

2 out of 5 A foot is always the best way to deal with a bug