Thaw

The Thaw (2009)

This is a movie that proves my theory that one day the damn hippies with be the end of us all! Before the emails come flooding in please understand that I’m only joking… well sort of anyway. Oh and before I forget to mention this be warned spoilers are a coming!

Val Kilmer plays noted environmentalist and scientist Dr. Kruipen. Along with some colleagues he has made an incredible discovery in the frozen, or not so much because of global warming, Arctic wasteland. He has found the remains of a Wooly Mammoth! But it isn’t just the Mammoth he has found, but also a fatal parasite that we in the modern world have no immunity to. Since this will prove his warnings right about the dangers of global warming the good doctor decides to infect himself and his graduate students that are coming up to the site and unleash the parasite on the world. That will show them damn it!

Really? That is the plot of the movie? The Thaw represents a real lost opportunity to make an exciting and scary horror movie. You have the great setting of an isolated and frigid environment. At points the movie does use this effectively and the idea that one of the characters is irrationally afraid of bugs also was a bit of genius. So when the CGI insects start crawling all over the place and he loses his mind it makes total sense and works. Oh and something about the insects laying eggs in their victims pushes all the right buttons in this viewer. As you can see they had some real potential here. So what goes wrong?

The movie gets all preachy on us and keeps dragging up the dangers of global warming. I understand that this is the premise of the movie, but get it established and then get to the bugs so your audience can get the “willies”. It seems like every time something really gruesome (and entertaining by God!) happens they have to wreck the momentum with another boring ass diatribe about the environment. I get it hairspray is bad; now get back to hacking off limbs! I’m not going to debate global warming here, but if I want preached at I have more then enough documentaries to watch. When I watch a flick like the Thaw I want more creatures and less politics. Is that too much to ask?

Oh and on the subject of too much to ask can Val Kilmer stop mailing performances in? He is the lead villain here and could have either played it deadly serious or hammed it up all over the screen. Honestly either could have been fun. What we get, though, is an uninspired walk thru that does nothing but drag the movie down when he is on screen. I was terribly disappointed with him.

While not terrible The Thaw is less then mediocre. I recommend skipping it and watching Carpenter’s the Thing for the fiftieth time!

1 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer