Creature-Filled Glacier a Bloody Treat
There’s something in the ice. For five years Janek (Gerhard Liebmann) has been living near the top of the Austrian Alps, assisting a parade of climate scientists march up and down the mountain paths in order to study the disappearing polar glaciers and analyze the effect they’re having on the rest of the world. When a sensor on the outskirts of the small station mysteriously falters, Janek, the facility’s lone technician, and a member of the research team head out to see what happened and hopefully fix the problem. What they discover is beyond explanation. The remaining glacier has turned blood-red, the ice melt coming off of it slowly dripping down into the valleys below.
PHOTO: IFC Films
I don’t think I need to state that what’s going on isn’t exactly a good thing, Janek and the rest of the small group at the top of the Alps shocked to discover the substance leaking out of the glacier isn’t exactly good for the environment. Worse, a politician, Ministerin Bodicek (Brigitte Kren), is on her way up to the research facility for a visit, and guiding her in is the tech’s estranged girlfriend Tanja (Edita Malovcic), a woman he’s still very much in love with. Suddenly all of them are being assaulted by a seemingly never-ending series of genetically mutated creatures, and with no way to contact anyone back in the civilized world the chances they’re going to make it through the night in once piece is becoming increasingly more slim by the second.
Much like the equally small scale Almost Human released earlier this year, the Austrian/German import Blood Glacier (Blutgletscher) is a delightfully inspired old school shocker sure to delight genre fanatics to no end. Featuring a slew of practical gore and visual effects that are as inspired and imaginative as they disgusting, the movie is an eye-popping effort that plays like John Carpenter’s The Thing creatively spliced with Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator. It is an ecological horror film that intertwines current climatology events with surreal genetic monstrosities, stranding the viewer alongside its captive protagonists in a fight for survival that might be lost long before it even has the chance to be won.
Director Marvin Kren and writer Benjamin Hessler have taken things up a notch since their winning apocalyptic zombie effort Rammbock: Berlin Undead, playing on common themes and ideas but utilizing them in ways that feel fresh and new. They take standard tropes but then utilize them a differently than normal, allowing the central characters (most notably Janek and Tanja) to evolve in ways that are a little off the beaten path. More than that, it’s not always clear who is going to survive and who is going to end up monster fodder, allowing the suspense inherent to the situation and the scenario to build to greater heights than otherwise would have been possible.
It’s possible I’m overstating things a tad. It’s not like Kren and Hessler are breaking all the rules, and while the body count itself is remarkably low (at least low as it pertains to similar films such as this) that in and of itself doesn’t make the picture overly unique. But I appreciated the authenticity and the honesty driving Janek and Tanja’s relationship, same going for how upfront certain characters stubbornly continue to be even with pressure to hide the truth of the situation and carry on as if nothing unfathomable or ominous is currently taking place.
As for the effects, what can I say other than that they’re terrific? Seriously, the creatures are outstanding, a combination of species and specimens that are as ingenious as they are lethal. More than that, I believed they existed, the filmmakers showing just enough to startle but never too much so that they become laughable or fake. It’s a clever sleight of hand, Kren always playing at the edges of the frame keeping things just indistinct enough to send constant shivers down the spine ratcheting up tension and suspense with relative ease.
There’s plenty more to like, not the least of which is Moritz Schultheiss’ unsettling outdoor cinematography. The score by Stefan Will and Marco Dreckkötter is also excellent, adding just the right ambiance to the proceedings without overwhelming any of the onscreen action. But the real star is Hessler’s script, the writer playing on ecological fears with playful irreverence. He doesn’t beat the viewer over the head with the climate changes aspects of the film yet at the same time he isn’t afraid of them, either, the filmmakers making their sociological points but doing so in the confines of a giddily gory creature feature.
In the end, though, it all comes back Kren. The director continues to prove himself to be an up and comer who appears to love working with tired genre clichés in order to do something unique, different and entirely unexpected with them. With Blood Glacier, he’s doing just that and more, having a blast taking the predictable and doing something wild and weird with yet still keeping it all character based and essential to the narrative. It’s a fun, fright-filled frolic into the unknown, building to an unforgettable conclusion of genetic abomination unlike anything one could easily predict let alone plausibly imagine on their own.
Film Rating: 3 (out of 4)
