While I was watching Ice Road Terror, I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming amount of dejavu. Ice Road [blank] which starts off following a truck moving large quantities of something across Alaska on roads of…ice. Ice Road Tomato? Ice Road…Tambourine? Finally it struck me – Ice Road Truckers! A reality show that airs on the History Channel that chronicles truckers moving supplies over frozen lakes or ice roads, which actually gathers about 3,000,000 viewers per episode. I think this tells you all that you need to know. SyFy has now started creating their $2,000,000 movies as parodies of reality shows. What’s next? Ice Road Tarantula vs Snow Scorpion? (Oh, god, what have I done?)
Anyway, yeah, the plot is pretty standard so I won’t go too in depth. Pretty much all of your generic characters are present in a film of this caliber. The nice guy, the pretty but troubled girl, the hick with butch wife, etc, etc. At least none of them were too annoying or outlandish, so you didn’t wish death down upon them as aggressively as with other SyFy characters. A gigantic reptile like creature escapes from the ice in Alaska to wreak havoc on the population of a town – all 3 per mile of them! Our group of generic friends must try to survive in the snowy wilderness against a creature with heat seeking eyeballs. And that is just not fair!
The script of Ice Road Terror was actually pretty good in some parts, but the biggest flaw is the script and plot’s use of science to justify what was happening. The writers tried to be so scientific about reptiles, heat molecules, prehistoric creatures, but almost always ended up falling flat on their faces. Because, as I can demonstrate, a quick search of Yahoo will show you that reptiles cannot survive in extreme conditions like living under thousands of pounds of snow and ice.
There were questionable aspects of production as well. Does anyone know if blood turns orange and jelly like when exposed to extreme cold? I know sometimes it does a coagulate process, but turn orange, really? Another big negative mark for me is the fact that I’m almost positive the snow is CGI. Why add computer generated snow? Why not just use some light, fake snow flakes or, ya know, not have it snowing at all? Also, the creature in this film can swim and churn through layers of ice that are a couple feet thick, but when it comes to crashing through some dry wall the task is almost impossible. Also, the creature gets its eyes ripped out at once point by one of the men, yet he can still see perfectly fine. Sloppy, sloppy production.
So, where does this leave my opinion? Well, honestly, I was excited for Ice Road Terror after my interview with Brea Grant, who stars in it along with David Lyle and Dylan Neal. She was probably the only good thing about this film, bringing at least a pretty face to look at against CGI snow and generic towns folk. I will say though that her performance here is very calm for being attacked by a giant lizard creature. She displayed much more emotion when trying to flee Michael Myers in H2. Brea has a thriller and another horror film coming out, so her chances for redemption are awaiting! Anyway, this was a SyFy film. You pretty much know what you’re going to get by tuning in to something called Ice Road Terror. But, I will say that it was probably one notch above Mega Snake vs Gateroid in terms of suck scale. Speaking of that, who runs the scheduling over at SyFy? Why did Mega Snake vs Gateroid come out in winter and Ice Road Terror come out in summer? Shouldn’t it have been switched?
I am actually watching it no :). You are right about Ms. Grant, my teenager shows more emotion when a bug crawls over her legs even. But its all good and like you indicated it is Syfy. Did you realise her expressions when they found the bodies and when the reptile grabbed the asian guy out of the truck..oh how could I forget when she realised the trailer was on fire hilarious…the mangled bodies somehow looked like wet died fabric. But no worries I am enjoying the movie for what its worth..+h by the way the next horror films may be “Attack of the Kardorashian Monsters” Terror in Housewife County…need I go on
I spotted some extremely hideous editing and general errors. For example, Beryl(?) sees her husband disembowelled by the monster, then when it disappears from view with its meal she doesn’t seem particularly distressed and says: “It’s gone” as though she had been hiding and felt nervous — as opposed to extremely distraught.
Also, the monster’s tail can plough through human flesh and bone in an instant, yet cannot penetrate ½ an inch of plywood?!