The Thaw (2009)

One of my all time favorite books is Carl Zimmers Parasite Rex, an informative and extremely well written book about parasites. Zimmer is one of those people who can write in such a way that even an average Joe like me can understand how parasites changes a persons DNA to escape detection by the bodys immunesystem or how it control a slug like a zombie. For instance, did you know that there is a type of fluke that wants pigs as their host and end up in their liver, but if they get into a human by mistake they get all confused and travel to the brain, and then you are pretty much fucked. Parasites are awesome and disgusting creatures and a perfect concept for a horror movie. Read the book. I truly recommend it.

With that said we move on the the subject of this review, an ecological horror movie called The Thaw or Frozen. It is a fairly serious movie considering it's plot and more low key and realistic than similar movies. On the other hand it's rather obvious what the message is and produces more groans and sighs than thoughts about the environment... Val Kilmer plays a scientist in northern Canada who is tagging an icebear but finds a mammoth in the thawing ice (global warming). Just two days later several of his crew are dead and to complicate matters his daughter and a couple of students are on their way to the site. It goes without saying (after my long rant about how cool parasites are) that a parasite is at fault, and global warming has set it free!

As a horror movie The Thaw is pretty decent. The parasites are nasty, there is a pretty nasty gorescene where one of the characters tries to remove his infection and the location is great. The photography is really good and the sfx competent, both cgi and practical. The characters are somewhat cliched but work in context of the story, although the dialogue is somewhat awkward. The reason for this - Mark A Lewis, the movies director and co-writer, is trying to tell us something about global warming and he isnt exactly subtle about it. Global warming is baaad and he is hammering it in with a sledgehammer. It would've worked better if the script had been toned down a bit and not so obvious. Otherwise, this is a pretty nice litte horrormovie with nasty creatures that make you feel all itchy while watching it and is good entertainment.