Hypothermia (2010)

I liked James Felix McKenneys Automatons a lot, a arthouseish lowbudget tribute to old scifimovies and got very intrigued when I heard that he was working on a creaturefeature that was set on a frozen lake. A couple of years later I pop in the dvdrelease of this with great anticipation and soon realize that this too is a tribute to old movies, very obviously Creature from the black lagoon. Complete with one of the worst monstercostumes in the history of filmmaking.

The concept is simple and effective though. Michael Rooker (dependable as always, no matter the clunkiness of the dialogue) is out icefishing along with his wife, their son and the sons girlfriend. Their enjoyment is soon ruined by annoying asshole Steve Cote (doing a perfect impersonation of Jason Sudekis. It's uncanny) and his boy complete with snowmobiles and a trailer stocked full of beer. Before they are able to get to pissed at each other they see a large creature under the ice, possibly a sturgeon of some kind. Well, it isnt. It is, of course, a humanoid fishcreature straight out of a Larry Buchanan movie with razorsharp, poisonous claws and we end up in a quite nice siegesituation on the ice during the night. Too bad about the monster.

I liked Hypothermia, it has a cool plot and the setting is excellent. The second half, when the characters hide out in the trailer with the skulking creature roaming about outside in the dark is full of tension and the script does a decent job with the characters even though some of the dialogue is a bit clunky. The cinematography is excellent, making good use of the location and providing a lot of moody atmosphere. As a monstermovie this isnt bad at all. But, we still have that monster. It isnt really that the design is plain awful, when we actually get to see it in more detail it looks like a lowtech version of the things in Humanoids from the deep, not really outright bad. The problem is that someone made a bad decision when designing it, making it as sleek and slender as possible. Probably a good idea in preproduction but when the creature starts to attack people during the night, we get flashes of something that looks like a guy in a wetsuit or some sort of rubberfetishist. Even though I am a lover of cheapo rubbersuits, this is a bit too silly. It doesnt kill the movie outright but it does lower the score. For once it would have been good to show the cheap monster in all its glory. And then there is that ending. I wont spoil anything, but I will say that it isnt very good. Might've sounded cool on paper but it really isnt.

So, Hypothermia isnt actually bad. There are a couple of nasty flaws but i enjoyed the experience. This is one flick that I really hope gets a remake someday, the concept and story is sound. And it still is better than a lot of syfys creature features.