Review by Tim-O
Directed by Mark A. Lewis
Starring Val Kilmer, Martha Malclsaac
Let me start out by hopping right on a soapbox. I feel like people are acting like idiots over global warming on both sides of the issue. Everyone involved is so concerned with proving the other side wrong that I wish they would just study the issue TOGETHER and release their findings to keep the public informed on the ever-changing environment. I personally think that we are arrogant to think we are so powerful to start OR stop something like climate change. The world’s climate has been changing since the planet’s birth and we seem to think it’s supposed to hold stable now just because we exist. I think we need to educate ourselves about how it’s ALWAYS changing and find ways to live with it intelligently. The rest of it is all politics and it makes me sad to see how it’s handled. I could go on forever, but I think you get idea of how I feel about the issue. I don’t mention this to start a huge debate and truly respect that we all feel differently on issues. It’s one of the things that make us human. I do, however, mention it as a warning to anyone who sits down to watch The Thaw. If you feel the way I do, or that the whole thing is a hoax, this movie may annoy and/or frustrate you. It’s unfortunate because everything else about the film is a fun throw-back to Sci-Fi/Horror flicks of the 70’s and 80’s.
Val Kilmer stars as a famous environmentalist studying global warming in the arctic. Kilmer and his team discover a polar bear eating the carcass of a partially thawed mammoth. The bear dies and they take it back to their research center to study it. They find the mammoth infected the bear with a parasite that lays the eggs of flesh eating bug-like creatures in it’s host. Kilmer’s daughter and a group of ecology students arrive soon after to find the research center deserted except for the bodies of some of Kilmer’s team and everyone else missing. The rest of the film is John Carpenter’s: The Thing (one of my personal favorites) with bugs instead of an alien organism.
The Thaw is my kind of horror film. It’s a simple creature feature with the characters trapped in a remote location struggling to survive the creatures and each other. However, as I alluded to earlier, the movie is way too preachy about global warming and even seems to suggest that eco-terrorism is justifiable. If these things really bother you about movies, you may want to avoid it. For me, it’s slightly annoying but I can look past it if the movie is good as a horror movie. Such is the case with The Thaw. It has great F/X and production values. The cast and filmmakers obviously took their work seriously and it gives the movie class. For gore-hounds, the movie has decent amount of gore and gruesomeness and it’s well done.
If you like these kinds of movies like I do, I think you’ll enjoy The Thaw. If preachy movies annoy you, try to sit back and keep reminding yourself, it’s only a movie…it’s only a movie…it’s only a movie... 7/10