The Thaw DVD Review
The Thaw DVD Review
Warm and Fuzzy, Wicked and Fatal.
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Recently-reanimated prehistoric parasites are yucky, and deadly to the human body. When you're marooned in the arctic with just a few scared scientists and shaky ecology students, you can't trust any of them. Quick and dirty amputations of bug-infested limbs really hurt. When faced with a potentially global epidemic and you can decide the world's fate, it's hard to figure out what to do.
Yeah… The Thaw is riddled with clichés — but add a dash of actor Val Kilmer at his histrionic best and some well-done gore makeup effects augmented with painstaking CGI, and you've got something. Something in the eco-horror vein that lies between the superior The Thing and the poorer The Last Winter. There's a sag toward the middle/end, but overall The Thaw is a brisk, chilly, silly and fun ride through the melting ice caps (and better than Whiteout, if you're specifically in search of snowy scares).
It begins by intro'ing Kilmer as Dr. David Kruipen, a man on a mission to prove that if we earthlings don't do something soon, our days on the planet are numbered. He's out in the middle of nowhere, doing research of back up his end-of-the-world theory, and uses a video camera to address his viewers and inform us. Very early in the film, we see a wormy, wriggly critter being tweezed out of one of his fellow scientists' forehead and the fidgeting starts! It's totally gross and utterly riveting.
Meanwhile Kruipen's daughter Evelyn (Martha MacIsaac) is on her way to join him, along with a few of her science-nerd friends, but oddly… they can't get a hold of him… why isn't he answering the phone or radio? Hm. I wonder.
Writer/Director Mark A. Lewis actually does a fine job here, building the suspense around the lesser characters and once the young folks arrive on scene he ratchets up the horror. Towards the end of the film it's a bit preachy and the extras on the DVD spotlighting interviews with the actors and filmmakers bear out the fact that they were trying to make a message movie that was also entertaining — that's a slippery slope (Outbreak is the best one I can think of which was equal parts entertainment, information, and thought-inducement). But when The Thaw is squirm-seeking, it's completely solid.
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson