THE THAW
(Review)

“The melting Arctic will reveal a frightening truth.”

In the ecological horror film The Thaw, director Mark A. Lewis presents us with a prehistoric parasitic terror that could prove to be the end of all there is. (Or, at the very least, put a very serious dent in civilization as we know it.)
The apocalypse cinema conceit is established right off the bat with the news montage-as-opening credits sequence gambit done in such entries as Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead redux, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, and Logan McMillan’s Last of the Living.
The gambit worked in those films, as it does here.
Of course, the reality is, as early as its opening credits sequence, The Thaw is already recalling earlier horror films, and it continues to do so, as the reels unwind…


Set on Banks Island, in the Canadian Arctic, the film brings to mind John Carpenter’s The Thing, the first season X-Files episode, “Ice” (which was, itself, a sort-of, kind-of Thing retread), Carter Smith’s adaptation of The Ruins, and the brilliant eco-horror entry, Larry Fessenden’s The Last Winter.
Which is, frankly, rather august company, if not for the fact that The Thaw suffers in comparison.
Having said that though, I must stress that The Thaw is still worth your time. I mean, when you’ve got X-Files alumnus William B. Davis in the aforementioned opening credits, talking about global warming and Armageddon and how it’s all our damned fault, well, that’s something that you need to pay attention to.


I have to say though, that aside from the semi-familiarity of the material, the cast isn’t exactly across-the-board good either.
There’s Val Kilmer in there (as ex-eco-activist David Kruipen) and Smallville’s Aaron Ashmore (whose twin Shawn happens to have been in The Ruins) and Everything’s Gone Green’s Steph Song, who’s saddled with a rather thankless role here.
There’s also Martha MacIsaac (as Kruipen’s mightily pissed-off daughter, Evelyn) and Kyle Schmid (from TV’s Blood Ties).
I shall refrain from pointing out which of the above are the weak links in the film’s cast… (Though I will say that MacIsaac did a great job in Dennis Iliadis’ remake of The Last House on the Left.)


Still, with all its flaws, The Thaw does have a bunch of cringe- and shudder-inducing moments, and, like The Last Winter, can serve as an effective cautionary tale of how we, as a race inclined to apathy, and perpetually unsatisfied with our lot, may very well end up destroying ourselves.
If you’ve been avoiding Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth thus far because “documentary” is still a dirty word to you, then perhaps The Thaw is the answer.
I mean, if a teeny Ice Age parasite can help wake up the masses, I’m sure Al Gore wouldn’t mind…


Parting shot: Reviews of The Last Winter, The Ruins, The Last House on the Left, and Everything’s Gone Green can be found in the Archive.

(The Thaw DVD cover art and images courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

FEAR ITSELF
Season 1 Episode 4
“In Sickness and In Health”
Written by Victor Salva
Directed by John Landis

The person you are marrying is a serial killer.


That’s what a typewritten note received by Samantha (Psych’s Maggie Lawson) reads, on her wedding day.
And though the premise does sound like some cheesy thriller by way of Lifetime, this was an episode brought to us by the tag team of Victor Salva (Jeepers Creepers) and John Landis (An American Werewolf In London).
With that sort of pedigree alone, this was high on my radar, and ultimately, I can appreciate the attempt, but am nonetheless disappointed with this particular union.


To begin with, though not as pronounced as it was in American Werewolf, that brand of Landis humour can still be detected in “In Sickness…”, and it’s an element that doesn’t quite benefit the episode’s set-up and action, much of which occurs in a dark, creaky church.
The thrills aren’t really there as well, and the overkill with the religious iconography—statuary and stained glass windows seem ubiquitous in this one—frankly gets annoying, as if Landis had nothing else to train his camera on. (Though they may perhaps be meant to foreshadow some gruesome climactic imagery, their repetitiveness just seems lazy and uninspired.)
The casting of Lawson’s co-star on Psych (and the USA Network show’s lead) James Roday as Samantha’s husband-to-be, Carlos, also serves to distract, as his portrayal of over-the-top fake psychic detective Shawn Spencer is a difficult shadow to shake; I don’t think I’d ever mentally equate the actor who plays Shawn Spencer with a groom and possible serial killer named “Carlos.”


And as far as Salva’s script goes, though I did note the narrative eventuality as soon as it was mentioned early on in the proceedings, I will nonetheless commend the script for the passably effective climactic twist.
The red herrings though, seem, in retrospect, to be desperate stabs at keeping the audience guessing.


There are some pluses, mind.
The stunt casting of Cancer Man himself, William B. Davis, as the hard-of-hearing Fr. Chris, is amusing, and the Hitchcock echo is also neatly slotted in.
And this is better than Landis’ earlier Masters of Horror entry, “Deer Woman,” so that’s something.
If however, you’re hard-pressed to see some truly worthwhile stuff from either Salva or Landis, you’d be better served by watching either Jeepers Creepers (just the first; you can skip the sequel) or An American Werewolf In London (not to be confused with the terrible sorta-sequel, Anthony Waller’s An American Werewolf In Paris).

(Images courtesy of nbc.com.)

SISTERS
(Review)

Dr. Philip Lacan (Stephen Rea) runs the Zurvan Clinic for the Study and Treatment of the Psychologically and Physiologically Unique. Some three years ago, he was involved in the deaths of two patients, and was indicted for conducting irresponsible procedures on children. Though he was ultimately found innocent of the crime, Village Spectator reporter Grace Collier (Chloe Sevigny) is convinced he’s up to no good at his clinic, and is rapidly crossing the border into harassment in her investigation of Lacan’s affairs.
That’s the basic premise of Douglas Buck’s Sisters, a loose remake of the 1973 Brian De Palma film. And there are certainly a number of elements in Sisters that come straight out of the De Palma psychological thriller playbook. Sadly though, for the most part, Buck’s effort comes off as a pale and limp echo of far better films of this stripe.

What makes this an even more resounding disappointment is the presence of Oscar nominees Rea and Sevigny, who seem all but detached from the narrative and their characters. And who can blame them when the script (by Buck and John Freitas) is a muddled affair at best.
We are given brief glimpses and allusions to Grace’s troubled past, but far from the deep insight we would require for the film’s climax to be narratively sound. There is also a particular moment in the film that, given the story’s outcome, becomes both illogical and impossible, as well as a separate plot point involving a television set that I’m not at all certain is even possible, given elementary physics.

All in all, there’s very little here to recommend, despite the presence of The X-Files’ Cancer Man, William B. Davis, and Everything’s Gone Green’s JR Bourne. Even Joshua’s Dallas Roberts is here, though in an ultimately thankless role.
I so wanted to like this one, what, with its Persian mythology reference in the Zurvan Clinic, as well as what could be a Cronenberg reference in Somnafree University (in The Brood, Oliver Reed’s Hal Raglan runs the Somafree Institute of Psychoplasmics; actually, even the whole name of the Zurvan Clinic sounds rather like a Cronenbergian construct), but the film itself is terribly flawed and not at all engaging.
If this was meant to aim for the heights achieved by early Cronenberg and De Palma, this misses the mark so badly.
What it has done though is make me curious to see De Palma’s original, it being one of his films I have yet to see. Maybe De Palma found the intriguing story in the premise that Buck so clearly failed to uncover here.

(Sisters OS courtesy of impawards.com; image courtesy of outnow.ch.)