Eye Candy #308 - "The Thaw"

The Thaw:  One of these “Ghost House Underground” thingees, a slew of low-budget horror movies with some recognizable names attached to them, whether in front of or behind the camera. It has Val Kilmer in it, and while he’s on the downside of his career, he’s given me enough good memories on the way up, I’m being kind to him on his way back down, even if it is almost exclusively direct-to-video hooey (I have yet to find that undiscovered diamond in the direct-to-dvd rough). At a remote arctic station in Alaska, Dr. David Kruipen (Kilmer) has discovered a frozen wooly mammoth in the snow. Unfortunately the mammoth isn’t the only thing thawing out. A group of students, including David’s daughter Evelyn, are assigned to assist his research, but things go all pear-shaped before they arrive, as prehistoric parasites are happy to find warm, new human hosts to infect. And Kruipen has ulterior motives of his own. If you don’t like creepy crawlies or bugs, this is NOT the video for you. Not at all. Seriously. I’m not kidding. A weird mélange of gross-out horror, global warming tirade, and low-budget creepiness, it relies too heavily on the “inherently eerie winter wilderness” (as other similar recent winter-themed horror movies have too, like “The Last Winter”) – if the evily googaly-moogalies don’t get you, the stir craziness will. It’s meant to be low budget, and it certainly is. Woodchuck sez, “Nothing to write home about.”