Deep Freeze (2001)
3/10
Really bad sci-fi horror monster film.
6 May 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Deep Freeze is set in 'Antartica' where we are informed that 'due to the current oil crisis Geotech Industries established GEO-1, a state of the art drilling facility. Two months ago, things started to go wrong...'. GEO-1 has a basic skeleton crew as it gears up for full operational status, supervisor Nelson (Gotz Otto) & scientist Dr. Monica Kelsey (Alexandra Kamp-Groeneveld) plus a few lowly drillers. The base has recently been suffering from earth tremors so Geotech does what any responsible company would do & sends a helicopter full of teenage graduate students out there to study the phenomena, do a bit of research & report back. However the unsuspecting students realise that the drilling has unleashed a Trilobyte type monster that scuttles around the place killing everyone for no apparent reason...

Co-produced & directed by John Carl Buechler Deep Freeze is a pretty crap attempt at a monster film. The script by Robert Boris, Dennis A. Pratt & Matthew Jason Walsh is basically a cross between Alien (1979) & The Thing (1982) only without the scares, shocks, tension or atmosphere. For a start the film is needlessly populated by annoying teenagers, there really is no need whatsoever for these people to be stuck in the middle of the Antartica. I know the film veers off course into conspiracy theory territory but it just comes across as absurd & it spends far to long on dull boring exposition that is as entertaining as watching paint dry. The character's are clichéd, the hero, the good looking bird, the computer geek, the disposable teenagers, the evil scientist & a creature that kills for no reason. I mean I can't think of an animal in nature that just kills for the hell of it, animals eat, sleep & reproduce. They don't live to kill annoying teenagers, do they? None of the victims have been eaten, they don't use the bodies to lay their young in & these things which look like large beetles just crawl around & kill the odd person, that's it. Deep Freeze is incredibly slow & it doesn't come to life until the final 15 minutes which is far too little far too late, the climax also features one of the most pathetic looking 'giant' creatures seen in recent years. Deep Freeze sucks, period.

Director Buechler really should stick to special make-up effects rather than directing, I suppose it's quite well made but it doesn't have much style. There is zero scares, tension or atmosphere which just kills Deep Freeze as a horror film. The creatures themselves look OK at best but they do look like rubber beetles more than anything else. Forget about any gore, I was disappointed at how tame & bloodless Deep Freeze was. There are one or two dead bodies, a gunshot wound & a cool bit when a creature is burrowing into a woman near the end but other than that there's not a drop of blood in the thing.

Technically Deep Freeze is alright, it's competent but at the same time it's very bland & forgettable. The special effects vary, some are OK while other's especially during the climax are very poor. The acting was pretty bad & those annoying teenagers, urgh.

Deep Freeze is trying to be a modern variation of The Thing, all the nonsense about ecology & it's teenage cast are very 'now'. Unfortunately this doesn't make for particularly good viewing, in fact it makes for awful viewing. Do yourself a favour & stay away from this piece of crap, really poor.
11 out of 14 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Recently Viewed