Icetastrophe is not a completely unwatchable movie and SyFy have done worse, it is a better movie (if only marginally) than their previous seasonal offering the 12 Disasters of Christmas.
The movie does contain a few things that make it a little better than it could have been. A couple of the death scenes are cool, once you don't mind that they're not particularly inventive, and do have a little fun and suspense. Some of the scenery is reasonably attractive too, looking much more than basement or abandoned allotment quality, and there is the use of some nice seasonal songs that fit well (there should have been more though).
However, apart from the scenery the production values for Icetastrophe are poorly done, it's shot rather drearily, is drably lit and while there are worse special effects in SyFy movies they still look laughably fake (including ones that look like giant penises). The direction mostly ranges from flat to incompetent, only coming to life in some of the deaths. When the seasonal songs are not used, the movie is scored in an unappealingly loud monotonous drone, with muddied sound quality. The script is incredibly poor, with forced humour (mostly unintentional), tedious ham-fisted melodrama that bogs the movie down rather than adding anything and dialogue that often sounds like gibberish.
Very little compelling about the story either, as well as being as thin as ice it takes stupidity to extremes (even for science fiction, the science is as far away from believable as you can possibly go), continuity errors are so sloppy that you could have sworn there wasn't any and it suffers from a large lack of tension, fun or suspense (albeit with the odd moment) as a result of sluggish pacing and the overload of stupidity, my tolerance for silliness and stupidity is high but this was to the extent that it was impossible to take at face value or enjoy. The characters have no development to them and are devoid of personality too, while the acting is the usual messy mix of over-acting and blandness.
Overall, not completely unwatchable but left me ice cold on the whole. 3/10 Bethany Cox
