October wouldn’t be complete without a good old fashioned chill down the back of the neck. I always try to discover new horror films that may become new favorites, but sometimes there are movies so horrendous they aren’t worth the film they are printed on. Hypothermia is such a film.

Hypothermia focuses on an ice fisherman named Ray Pelletier, played by Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead), who brings his family out to a remote cabin for the weekend. Everything goes horribly wrong when something under the ice isn’t quite the catch they are looking for. I would bring up more of a back story for Rooker’s character, but there absolutely is none.

No rules are established and logic is thrown out the window. I’m not sure which is more unbearable, the ludicrous plot or the inhuman script. The way these characters deal with their situation is beyond comprehension. Just leave the ice.

One of the main characters, Steve Cote, played by Don Wood, has less common sense than a mosquito flying into a bright light. Wood hams it up in the most annoying way possible. There are always characters written that we are suppose to hate, but when your character uses the “f-bomb” in every other sentence, you are just convincing me you are a bad writer. He is cartoonish. Everyone else is so flat and detached from the audience that you are rooting for the ice just to collapse on itself to make the film more interesting.

This film buries itself under piles of irritable character moments alongside its lifeless cinematography. Yes, the location is set on a frozen lake, but that doesn’t mean the quality of picture displayed has to be just as cold.

Right off the bat, we receive a very slow introduction to the people we will be spending time with throughout the film. Mindless chatter ends in empty exposition. There are two attempts to shove pieces of depth into these characters, but is quickly forgotten only to be brought up later in the film after no emotional attachment has been made at any other points in the film.

Jaws is the pinnacle of monster films. Brody, Hooper, and Quint didn’t have to go back out on the water, but it was a compelling story and you believed in their cause. At no time during Hypothermia did I think, “man they should really stay on the ice and try and catch this thing, it would really make the story satisfying.” If anyone killed the monster it would mean nothing to the story. Yes it kills some loved ones, but thanks again to a faulty script, this film lacks conviction.

Speaking of which, the dialogue and the believability of what takes place on this lake is absolutely silly. And the fact that this film takes itself so seriously is the worst part. You can’t have fun with Hypothermia no matter how hard you try. Even with the monster, as lame as it is, there is not one moment to give any care in the world.

Like any good monster flick, there has to be a set amount of tension before we are presented the big bad; Hypothermia has zero. Not even the music helps. There is one great moment when we first see the monster zip past under the ice, but nothing more can be said about the build up. The use of first person perspective of the monster weakens the tension and the horror of the monster. How are we suppose to fear something that we don’t get a clear picture of.

Forget about feeling terrified; the design of this creature is so bad that upon closer look, you can see the material of the wetsuit bunching up around its arms. It just looks like a man in a wet suit with an alien mask on just like when Kirk fights the Gorn.

At the moment when they first show the monster, words could not describe how underwhelming and horrible the monster looked. It looked like a costume you could buy at a halloween store. It is nice that they use practical effects to create the monster, but it looks so fake that you can’t feel any sense of threat whenever it appears.

The action is almost as incomprehensible as the emotional ties these characters have to the audience. If anyone had difficulty following the action scenes in Cloverfield or Saving Private Ryan, Hypothermia puts those films to shame. Any moment the creature popped up the camera panned to darkness, dizzily showed a limb here or there, and eventually leveled out.

Dead Alive and The Evil Dead are perfect examples of how you can take B-Horror level films and turn them into something magical. They embrace the camp and revel in their goofiness. In Hypothermia’s case, writer-director James Felix McKenny takes the monster genre and rips out the heart before he even began shooting.

Hypothermia had one direction, straight down the drain along with last night’s Taco Bell run. It never attempts to be anything more than just a generic, low-budget creature feature. Never pushing the boundaries of horror, Alfred Hitchcock is rolling over in his grave for this one.

Grade: F

POST REVIEW SPOILER THOUGHTS:

At the very beginning of this film, half of Ray’s body falls into the ice during the day and after what it seems like hours, when it is completely pitch black out, his family eventually realizes he has not come home. How did he survive that frozen death trap? Why didn’t the monster attempt to eat him when there were clear first person shots of the monster swimming toward him? How long was Ray actually under the ice for? This was DUMB.

Don Wood’s character, Steve and his son are introduced driving a giant truck hauling a huge trailer behind it on the ice. What kind of moron does this? It is never said in the film if Steve had any experience ice fishing, but the director does state it is just a sport to conquer and it actually is his first time. You would think someone who would want to try something for their first time would be a bit more cautious. Nope. He rides off the ice at full speed after dropping off his trailer.

When Steve Jr. is cut up by the monster with blood gushing out everywhere, his father does nothing to help and believes he does not need to go to the hospital. Father of the year right here.

Ray says that the ice is weak, and that putting that mobile fishing home on the ice was stupid, yet he brings his family to Steve’s camp and goes inside their mobile home, adding more weight and pressure onto the ice. Smart.

Ray’s son David’s girlfriend Gina tells Steve that his cut is not as deep as Stevie Jr.’s but it doesn’t look bad, but it is a long cut and bleeding like crazy – so obviously there is no rush to go to the hospital… or for that sentence to make logical sense.

When Steve loses his son, he is completely unemotionally affected by the incident. Father of the year again.

Seriously, everything would have been OK if they just got off the ice and walked away.

The death of David, Ray’s son, is almost laughable. very predictable and really cheesy. There is no sense of closeness between Ray and David too. The father-son relationship is the only thing this film relies on for emotional depth, and it didn’t sound like from David that he and his father were close.

No sense of bond between Gina and David. We could have had hints before he dies about their plans. They could have shown their love for each other. David never gets a chance to show his willingness to protect Gina for love.

There is no reason for Ray’s wife to get angry with him, he is trying to protect everyone. She should have all the reason to be just as angry after the death of her son. Ray’s wife compares Ray to Steve, but at no point does Ray say he wants to stay and kill it, he just wants to be well prepared to kill it when they make a run for it.

You could have cared less if Rooker died, it was so anti-climatic, no struggle, no emotional weight casted over his wife, the film just moves on.

Apparently the fish man knows the English language? He didn’t kill the wife after she begged for her life. Was this fish man human at one point like the wounds on the victims body’s sort of attempted to imply?

It is unclear why the victims were able to see the way the fish monster saw. Were they turning into them? Was the fish monster creating a psychic link to see through his victims eyes? We don’t know, it is not explained or thoroughly made clear.

What I do know is I am glad the movie was only a measily 70 minutes with pathetic closure.

DVD Features:

The Bonus feature “The Making of Hypothermia” is just as heartless as the film itself. You are just given tons of b-roll footage of set designers putting the camps together, no introductions or anyone talking to the camera. There is no direction or real sense as to why this documentary is made or why the director wants to shoot certain scenes in the way he does. Why do the actors wanted to be a part of this film, beats me. There is one moment with the writer-director of the film and he just tells us what they are about to shoot. This behind the scenes documentary is something that feels like an after thought that; something they figured they would use just because they had some guy randomly filming what was going on. Even Michael Rooker has no idea what he is doing in the movie, he even admits it in the making of the documentary. I’ll give Rooker credit, he actually sacrifices his own body to go under the ice water and not use a stunt double. When he is completely underwater he is in a pool though.

There is a feature on the DVD, “Give me shelter,” that explains why the families use the camps they use and with 90% of it devoted on the subject of how they found and retrieved the “Stinger” camper.

Special feature, “Ron and Reel,” showcases the faux fishing TV show used in the film. Maybe if we got a sense of how funny or good or cheesy or why we should want to watch this faux TV show is beyond me.