The Thaw

Modest but respectable Canadian production, “The Thaw” rehashes a string of horror movie tropes framed with a clear pro-environmental message. Otherwise, it’s a mash-up of horror movies such as “The Thing” (1982), from which the Arctic setting is borrowed for a potentially devastating sci-fi bio-menace, and invasive parasites from classics such as David Cronenberg’s “Shivers” (1975).

The notion of a pandemic provoked by a prehistoric organism that reestablishes itself due to global warming is definitely intriguing and is well-executed from a purely horror point of view thanks to a robust combination of genuinely stomach-turning makeup and special effects (from this perspective, it seems to fall into the “Cabin Fever” (2002) camp). Rounding out the picture, we get a decent dose of suspense, a fair-to-middling cast (Val Kilmer is even back), and a screenplay intent on shamelessly recycling every possible genre cliché.

As far as the science component, for some unknown reason Dr. Kruipen calls these particular parasites “vertebrates,” but their anatomy seems to suggest otherwise. It’s probably just a lapse on Dr. Kruipen’s part, the inevitable consequence of overwork.