[The Thaw]
Plot:A deadly prehistoric parasite is released when a Woolly Mammoth is discovered in a melting ice cap. Faced with a potentially global epidemic, four ecology students must destroy the parasite before it reaches the rest of civilization. One-by-one they are infected and one-by-one they turn on each other. Soon the survivors are left with only one choice - to make the ultimate sacrifice and burn everything to the ground... including themselves.

Cast: Val Kilmer, Martha McIsaac, Anne Marie DeLuise, Sebastian Gacki, John Callander, Steph Song.

My Thoughts:Good sci-fi/horror blend.

Review:"The Thaw" is the latest crack at a successful scifi-horror film. Sci-fi-horror is a blend that hasn't worked really well here of late, mostly because the usual approach is to build the plot around a government coverup, or something involving a bioweapon of some sort. "The Thaw" however takes a more simple and effective approach to it's story. The movie follows a group of environmetalist students who trek to the artic for a research expedition involving the quickly-melting polar ice caps.

Before they arrive however, one of the students fathers and his assistant had unearthed the corpse of a Woolly Mammoth. This prompts the scientist/global activist, to tell one of his other assistants to tell his daughter not to make the trip. But she does anyways, along with the other kids. Upon their arrival at the artic, they soon discover that the dig is infested with deadly parasites which were attached to the mammoth.

Parasites that dig their way into human flesh and then reproduce. Now...they have to find a way to kill the insects, without allowing the plague to spread outside of the site. "The Thaw" works because it sets up a more interesting lead in to the horror elements of it's script than the normal science-fiction-horror hybrids. The idea of eco-activist-students heading to the artic for research works a whole lot better than the usual "government experiment gone wrong" nonsense which we see in almost every sci-fi-horror movie made these days.

And the fact that the characters are diverse, and written to be intelligent, normal, every day kids, and not pretentious college students who see the trip as an opportunity to get high and have sex, makes the movie and it's players a whole lot more tolerable to watch on screen. Val Kilmer, Martha MacIsaac, and Aaron Ashmore add some above average acting talent to the movies cast. They're blended with a few unknowns and of course, the parasites, who are the stars of the film in their own right.

It's a good thing this movie didn't go CGI crazy, or it would've ruined the overall effectiveness of the bugs. The parasites are shown very often in the movie, especially late in act two, and all of act three. And the visual fx used to create them makes the bugs look creepy, realistic, and pretty frikkin gross. SyFy, who uses CGI for pretty much every film they make, could take a cue from these guys.

Mark A. Lewis does an excellent job capturing the surroundings of the artic in the movie, as we get lots of shots of high-up mountains, ice caps, and snow-covered hills. The surroundings are blended into the movie excellently, and add a beautiful yet hopeless element to the occuring events. There's not a lot blood and gore in this film, which it really doesn't need considering it has a strong script in it's own right. We do get some really chilling and eye-opening scenes though including the obligatory body-part-hack scene, when one unlucky person gets infested by the bugs, and we get a very visually shocking scene where the bugs literally devour and engulf a massive animal corpse.

The characters are also written to be pretty intelligent as I said before, and when the shit hits the fan, one of them actually takes up arms and is ready to shoot anyone they deem to be infected by the bugs. A nice change of pace from the usual indecisiveness displayed by characters in most films that involve a scenario of a plague, infection, or otherwise. The ending is a bit melodramatic though, and there's an explosion at the end which doesn't have the best effects visually, but beyond that..."The Thaw" is a good sci-fi-horror blend with good performances, tolerable characters, and a strong script.

Positives:Tolerable and even likeable characters, always a plus. Makes it easy to cheer on their survival. The bugs are good antagonists in the way they are introduced into the film, great directing job by Lewis and great usage of sceneries, and a strong script.

Negatives:The underlying themes involving global warming and changing our way of life to preserve the environment can be a bit too preachy at times, although the themes are very important.

Overall:Three and a half out of four stars.





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