THE PLOT: While on vacation in China celebrating their honeymoon, newlyweds Melissa (Amy Smart) and Yul (Tim Chiou) are left stranded in the middle of a vacant field and forced to fend off a pack of marauding demons set free thanks to a full moon at the height of the seventh lunar month.
THE GOOD: Director Eduardo Sanchez also made The Blair Witch Project and he understands that what is left unseen is far scarier than anything he can show you while Smart and Chiou display a surprising amount of chemistry considering the subject matter.
THE BAD: Where to begin. First off, this movie is astonishingly poorly lit making cinematographer Wah-Chuen Lam’s frenetic handheld camerawork difficult to make out. I get that this is set in the dead of night and all but long portions are so dark the image might well as be a solid black screen. Next, Sanchez’s script takes an intriguing idea based on Chinese mythology and then does little with it, one weird, surreal sex scene inside a candle-lit plantation feeling like it was lifted straight out of Rosemary’s Baby. Finally, the two main characters act like total idiots, at one point having the perfect opportunity to get away only to let themselves be drawn back into things thanks to some ominous chanting.
GORE MOMENT: None. While there is blood, Sanchez relies heavily on a viewer’s own imagination to generate scares.
EXTRAS: Commentary track with writer/director Eduardo Sanchez and star Amy Smart, two behind-the-scenes featurettes, an extremely long making-of documentary, Trailer Gallery and more of those pesky Ghost House Micro Videos.
BOTTOM LINE: I like that Sanchez attempts to use a person’s imagination against them and I also think actors Smart and Chiou are more than up to the task to assist in this regard. The problem is the filmmaker’s script is outright nonsense while his lighting scheme is so bad making out what is going on is more frustrating than it is anything else. There is potentially a solid little fright-fest here; unfortunately said potential is never realized.
THE PLOT: Renowned environmental scientist Dr. David Kruipen (Val Kilmer) discovers the frozen carcass of a woolly mammoth in the Arctic tundra inadvertently unleashing a prehistoric parasite that could wipe out every animal on the face of the Earth. A trio of college students, as well as Kruipen’s estranged daughter, must find away to stop the parasite before it spreads to civilization.
THE GOOD: The film plays on a lot of primal fears and is well directed by Mark A. Lewis. Tension builds slowly, the tiny parasitic bugs barely making their presence known until they finally explode all over the remote research facility. The acting is solid, “Smallville” regular Aaron Ashmore and Last House on the Left star Martha MacIsaac particular standouts. The finale, while unsurprising, still manages to remain chilling, and by the time it was over my skin was tingling forcing me to somewhat hypochondriacally check for insects.
THE BAD: There is no doubt where all this is heading as there are only so many directions Mark and Michael Lewis’ script can go. There are a number of pointless red herrings that add nothing, while the last second resurrection of a supposedly dead character is about as surprising as one and one adding up to two. I’m also tired of the horror movie trope of a hysterical character getting the majority of the attention, the one I’m thinking about here so annoying I kept hoping someone would knock him the heck out and leave him to the parasites.
GORE MOMENT: Not many, but when the gore is unleashed it is done so superbly. The best instant, however, involves the helicopter pilot and is ruined by the trailer so, please, if you want to be surprised do not watch it before viewing the movie itself.
EXTRAS: A rather extensive behind-the-scenes featurette, more Ghost House Micro Videos and a Trailer Gallery.
BOTTOM LINE: While not very original, The Thaw is nonetheless a freaky and well-acted ecological horror-thriller that offers up enough scares to make it worthy of a look.
