Blood and Snow

What in the organism was this? The movie stanked, it was a bore without an original thought. No blood, no special effects, no suspense, and the actors were so wooden. Especially the female E. T. lead. I watched because I am a fan of horror movies, but i was disappointed and felt like I was missing something. Vernon Wells should have turned down his role in this sorry Science fiction film. A waste of time was spent watching this mess, do y'all self a favor and skip this turkey. Watching paint dry would be more of a thrill. Hollywood needs to come out with more original and better films. Trust me, ugh.

In the Arctic, two scientists come across a meteor that has a devastating effect on them: it kills one researcher and infects the other. The base where they work takes in the survivor, but when the team members die one after the other, a woman named Marie is suspected of also being infected with a dangerous virus. In a race against time, it remains unclear who will survive the next 24 hours...

Horror in the eternal ice...

I wasn't sure if I should really subject myself to this. A kind of rip-off of Carpenter's The Thing but without gore... (?) Doesn't sound particularly tempting. And at just under 2 hours, it's not a short "pleasure" either. On the other hand, I love snow/ice scenarios and the title promised me at least some red splashes on the white background.

Unfortunately, a good setting does not make a good film. Of course, a dark, claustrophobic research station comes across as atmospheric. The fact that we are stuck there with danger and cannot escape because everything that could save us is several days away actually works well. The necessary ingredients for a tasteful contribution are basically there. Unfortunately, Blood and Snow never grabs us by the balls, or anywhere else, to give us a good shake. Instead, sadness and boredom slowly set in. We sense the danger, experience the paranoia, but unfortunately it is only gripping in the rarest of cases.

Dialogue-heavy low-budget thriller that nevertheless comes across as (frighteningly) meaningless for long stretches.

I'm sure glad I'm just a "movie watcher" and not a "film buff", so I can enjoy watching a decent movie, without picking everything apart. In my humble opinion, the acting was good and the story all held together. I gave it a 7, which is probably high, but just trying to offset all of the unwarranted terrible ratings. Certainly derivative of "The Thing", without all the cool creature effects, but nothing wrong with that. Hey, no one complained about West Side Story being derivative of Romeo and Juliet, did they? Okay, have I typed enough characters yet? I guess not quite yet. How about now? I did it!

Right, well I had, of course, never heard about the 2023 sci-fi horror movie "Blood and Snow" from director Jesse Palangio, prior to stumbling upon it by random chance here in 2024. Of course I opted to sit down and watch the movie, on account of it being a horror movie that I hadn't already seen.

The storyline in "Blood and Snow" felt like a watered down homage to the classic John Carpenter movie "The Thing", except "Blood and Snow" was lacking the entertaining storyline, the good cast and the impressive special effects that "The Thing" had. In fact, "Blood and Snow" had nothing even remotely close to what "The Thing" had. And it felt like writers Rossa McPhillips and Simon Phillips weren't even trying.

The narrative in the movie is slow paced, and there isn't exactly a whole lot of anything overly interesting happening. And that makes sitting through "Blood and Snow" quite an ordeal. I was close to giving up on watching it several times throughout the course of the 93 minute runtime.

Of the entire cast ensemble, I was only familiar with actor Vernon Wells. And lets just be honest here, he isn't exactly A-list material. The acting performances in the movie were fair enough, despite the fact that the actors and actresses had nothing to work with in terms of an interesting or entertaining script, or a detailed character gallery.

If you enjoy horror movies, and if you have an ounce of love of "The Thing", do yourself a favor and give "Blood and Snow" a wide berth. It simply isn't worth the effort. I ended up tossing the towel in the ring 55 minutes into the boredom that is "Blood and Snow", by then I just couldn't take any more of the suffering.

My rating of this dumpster fire of a movie lands on a generous two out of ten stars.

No pun intended - now you may say: Carpenters The Thing was a "remake" itself ... and that is partly true of course. Though if you've seen the "original" you might remember or recognize that the older movie (Carpenters is from the 80s so yes I know that is old too) was quite different than the "newer" version that Carpenter did.

But this feels like quite the rip off from Carpenter that I have to admit another reviewers summary headline had me ... The Thing reject ... that person got it right for sure! I still came up with my own spin (which I hope you appreciate) ... the one thing that is a bit of an update (even the special effects seem way better in the movie from the 80s) ... is the addition of a female character ... and the ending is ... well "different" here too.

Still not for the faint hearted ... if you want to listen to almost all of us here: stick to the "original" (Carpenters The Thing) ... heck even watch the "prequel" that was done 30 years after that movie was released ... but if you have nothing else to do ... well you have been warned! Beware ... of the Thing.