DVD Review: Environmental Horror in ‘The Thaw’
The Thaw (2009)
Studio: Lionsgate
Release Date: October 6, 2009
Directed By: Mark A. Lewis
Cast: Val Kilmer, Martha MacIsaac, Viv Leacock, Aaron Ashmore & Kyle Schmid
Review By: Annie Riordan
Global warming. Climate change. Greenhouse effect. Call it what you will. Believe in it or not, the fact remains that Eco-Terror is the new wave in horror. From Larry Fessenden’s sober take on the subject in 2006’s The Last Winter to Roland Emmerich’s ridiculously overblown 2012, terror in the form of melting ice caps has never been more popular.
Nor has it ever been less terrifying than in 2009’s The Thaw, a slashery mash up of Last Winter, John Carpenter’s The Thing and the 1993 X-Files episode “Ice”. Despite the best efforts of the opening credits to instill a Dawn of the Dead-like sense of impending doom, we’ve already watched a stunningly bland Val “Squirrel-Cheeks” Kilmer reading a pretentious passage from his own journal with all of the passion and enthusiasm of a catatonic novocaine junkie. Yeah, this one’s gonna hurt.
Turns out that Val is the leader of a small Arctic scientific expedition who has unearthed a baby woolly mammoth from the ice. With three college students scheduled to join him in the ongoing venture, Val gives his estranged daughter Evelyn an impromptu call, begging her to drop everything and fly up as well. Evelyn is still bitter about the whole “mom-dying-and-dad-not-showing-up-for-the-funeral” thing and initially blows him off. Inevitably, she changes her mind, apparently having realized that her sulky, bratty presence is apt to irritate her father better than her absence ever could.
Along with quarreling lovers Ling and Feddy, the Ice Man’s twin brother, and the sole black guy (gee, I wonder who will be the first to fall victim here?), Evelyn arrives at Ice Station Lame-O only to find it abandoned. Ling and Feddy immediately commence to screwing each other, Feddy emerges as the Jerk Who Will Complicate Things later in the movie, and nobody seems overly concerned about the bitey little bugs that are wandering around the base…that is, until one of the members of the expedition team shows up, covered in bug bites and festering egg sacs. Seems that the mammoth they dug up was filled to literal bursting with parasite eggs, which are now hatching as the carcass thaws.
Faster than you can say “global pandemic”, Feddy is pissing blood, Ling looks like the Before part of a Clearasil commercial, and paranoia reigns supreme. The outbreak must be contained, but some cowardly, selfish no-goodniks – including Evey’s own daddy – have other plans.
It all pans out pretty much as expected, up to and including the lame “it’s not over!” ending. I can’t even come up with an original insult with which to slam this film, as I feel like I’ve already exceeded my usage of words like “formulaic” and “unoriginal” for the remainder of my movie-reviewing life. The Thaw is all of those things and less; unscary, annoying, and ultimately a complete waste of time which left me hoping that, when the Environmental Apocalypse does eventually happen, Kilmer and the rest of the cast are eaten by zombie polar bears and rage-infected Emperor penguins. An Inconvenient Truth was scarier than this flick could ever hope to be.
