Deep Freeze (2001) User Reviews

Nothing outstanding here...

[paul_haakonsen · 4/10 · 1 March 2020]

Well, granted my expectations for the 2002 movie "Deep Freeze" weren't particularly high when I happened to find the movie in 2020. I had never heard of the movie, nor of the people on the cast list.

But still, if I haven't seen a movie and I am given the chance, and the movie seems like it might have potential, then I will sit down to watch it. So I did with "Deep Freeze" from director John Carl Buechler.

Turns out that this was an action horror movie that felt like something left over from the late 1990s - it had that particular feel to it, for better or worse.

"Deep Freeze" wasn't a particularly impressive movie. Sure, it was watchable, but it was by no means an outstanding or overly entertaining movie. It was generic and predictable, and the creature design was dubious and questionable at best.

The acting in the movie was as to be expected for a movie such as this.

My rating of "Deep Freeze" is a mere four out of ten stars. Hardly a movie that you should rush out to watch, nor a movie that you should put at the top of your to-watch-pile of movies.

Really bad sci-fi horror monster film.

[poolandrews · 3/10 · 6 May 2006]

Deep Freeze is set in 'Antartica' where we are informed that 'due to the current oil crisis Geotech Industries established GEO-1, a state of the art drilling facility. Two months ago, things started to go wrong...'. GEO-1 has a basic skeleton crew as it gears up for full operational status, supervisor Nelson (Gotz Otto) & scientist Dr. Monica Kelsey (Alexandra Kamp-Groeneveld) plus a few lowly drillers. The base has recently been suffering from earth tremors so Geotech does what any responsible company would do & sends a helicopter full of teenage graduate students out there to study the phenomena, do a bit of research & report back. However the unsuspecting students realise that the drilling has unleashed a Trilobyte type monster that scuttles around the place killing everyone for no apparent reason...

Co-produced & directed by John Carl Buechler Deep Freeze is a pretty crap attempt at a monster film. The script by Robert Boris, Dennis A. Pratt & Matthew Jason Walsh is basically a cross between Alien (1979) & The Thing (1982) only without the scares, shocks, tension or atmosphere. For a start the film is needlessly populated by annoying teenagers, there really is no need whatsoever for these people to be stuck in the middle of the Antartica. I know the film veers off course into conspiracy theory territory but it just comes across as absurd & it spends far to long on dull boring exposition that is as entertaining as watching paint dry. The character's are clichéd, the hero, the good looking bird, the computer geek, the disposable teenagers, the evil scientist & a creature that kills for no reason. I mean I can't think of an animal in nature that just kills for the hell of it, animals eat, sleep & reproduce. They don't live to kill annoying teenagers, do they? None of the victims have been eaten, they don't use the bodies to lay their young in & these things which look like large beetles just crawl around & kill the odd person, that's it. Deep Freeze is incredibly slow & it doesn't come to life until the final 15 minutes which is far too little far too late, the climax also features one of the most pathetic looking 'giant' creatures seen in recent years. Deep Freeze sucks, period.

Director Buechler really should stick to special make-up effects rather than directing, I suppose it's quite well made but it doesn't have much style. There is zero scares, tension or atmosphere which just kills Deep Freeze as a horror film. The creatures themselves look OK at best but they do look like rubber beetles more than anything else. Forget about any gore, I was disappointed at how tame & bloodless Deep Freeze was. There are one or two dead bodies, a gunshot wound & a cool bit when a creature is burrowing into a woman near the end but other than that there's not a drop of blood in the thing.

Technically Deep Freeze is alright, it's competent but at the same time it's very bland & forgettable. The special effects vary, some are OK while other's especially during the climax are very poor. The acting was pretty bad & those annoying teenagers, urgh.

Deep Freeze is trying to be a modern variation of The Thing, all the nonsense about ecology & it's teenage cast are very 'now'. Unfortunately this doesn't make for particularly good viewing, in fact it makes for awful viewing. Do yourself a favour & stay away from this piece of crap, really poor.

Trilobytes? Emphasis on "Bites!" **Minor Spoilers**

[satellitepictures · 2/10 · 28 July 2006]

Isolated frozen base camp. Something going strange? Sound familiar? Take The Thing and sub a dog sized, killer trilobyte in place of the alien entity and you still have not come close to Carpenter's classic. The acting is bad but I do admit I have seen worse. The only thing this movie is better than is those made at home videotaped movies where the sets are someone's bedroom made to look like a lab or they spend the entire film in the woods near their house. At least this is on film and the sets look halfway decent. Not huge budget, but like I said, it isn't someone's basement they are trying to tell you is a laboratory. Every time the bug attacks someone the movie has quick cut flashbacks. I suppose this is supposed to represent someone's life flashing before their eyes before they die, but the problem is since we have only seen these people for a few minutes, that is all the flash back to. Here he is arriving, here he is eating, here he is entering this room, boom he's dead. What makes it funnier is that one of the guy's flashbacks was edited wrong (the helicopter pilot) so one of the flash parts in the sequence isn't even his but a character that has not yet died. So you know ahead of time who is going to die and where haha There are 2 characters that go back and forth from being interested in each other to being against each other (oil driller vs environmentalist) that really doesn't make much sense at all. Time also has no meaning in this film as the copter pilot towards the beginning states he is going to go secure the chopper at the heliport after they arrive and it seems like a few days go by and they still refer to him as securing the chopper. ???? So throw away any common sense and timing issues and you might somewhat enjoy this flick. I doubt it though.

The cold must have gotten to the director.

[Bill_S_DE_NJ · 2/10 · 18 April 2021]

Really bad... Like a High School production. I have to leave a longer note, or it won't record my comment, but I really don't want to think about this movie any longer.

Don`t Defrost This Turkey

[Theo Robertson · 2/10 · 18 August 2003]

A scientific group in the south pole find themselves being killed one by one by a monster . This premise is similar in many ways to THE THING but whereas John Carpenter had its strengths - Most notably its downbeat depressing atmosphere - DEEP FREEZE is an extremely dumb movie with very poor production values , the script is nothing you haven`t seen before , the acting is unconvincing but worst of all is the monster which resembles a big rubber beetle . If I remember correctly there`s a scene where someone is attacked and it`s obvious the actor`s holding onto a rubber prop while screaming . I might have a false memory of this scene because DEEP FREEZE is instantly forgettable . I can clearly remember a scene with footage of a real insect superimposed over the action though

I`m curious as to how many reviewers on this page who`ve put the boot into DEEP FREEZE are fans of horror movies ? I`m not really a fan of the genre myself since most horror movies like this one suffer from a dumb script and substandard production values . If you don`t like that sort of thing you`ll certainly hate this movie . If you`re a horror die hard you may only dislike DEEP FREEZE

Ice Crawlers...Not So Chilling

[corruptmind21 · 4/10 · 4 February 2005]

I only saw this movie because of Allen Lee Haff being in it, but I have to say that, even though it wasn't the best horror movie (can you call it a horror movie if it's not scary?) I've seen, it wasn't the worst. It certainly surpassed Rodentz! But anyway, the movie was okay, and I liked the different storyline. There were a few scenes that looked kinda fake, but a few that had some good effects to them. There was one scene though, the really ticked me off. In one scene, it shows the "creature" chasing after Allen and Rebekah's characters after it finished killing someone, and Allen has a gun, but he doesn't shoot the thing! He just runs away with the others, ending up in a situation with the creature, where he falls about 2 flights of stairs and wrestles with the creature, only to get a tiny scratch on his face and his shirt a little bit dirty. Come on. It was also amusing that Allen's character, who was supposed to be southern,-I think from Texas-kept losing his accent every now and then. Ha! The ending was rather stereotypical as well, but you gotta do something I guess. But sad to say, I kinda liked the movie, and not just because I got some Allen eye candy.

~K~

Amazingly awful

[nickwim-983-59227 · 1/10 · 14 November 2019]

I thought this would be a low budget but perhaps passable 1h20 mins. How wrong I was. So much talking about nothing to fill time and a few shots of a big woodlouse. I kid you not. I like bad movies but this was awful x 100. Watch The Thing. Either the original or the prequel.. Don't be fooled by the movie synopsis or cover art. This is baaaaaad. And cheap. And I so wanted just to see a bad movie tonight not a horrificly awful one.

Deep Freeze? That's where the negative of this movie should have gone.

[Tuco-Benedicto-Maria-Ramirez · 1/10 · 24 January 2005]

Awful film about an Antarctic (hang on...) research team (THAT sounds familiar) who have discovered a strange lifeform frozen in the ice (you guessed it). Said lifeform (a big flesh-eating bug) goes on the rampage. Terrible acting, trite script and poor ("poor" as in: "you will laugh with your friends and make fun of the film-makers who poisoned the world with this trash") special effects. It even goes as far as using unused footage from The Thing (shots of the camp from outside, and **PLOT SPOILER (not that you'll care)** when the camp blows up at the end PLOT Spoiler END (aren't you glad I warned you?)**)! Save your money and see The Thing instead, or perhaps hire a prostitute from your local escort agency - that's what the film-makers should have done. Or at least given the money spent on "Deep Freeze" to a script that deserved it.

Really awful in every way, shape and form

[gtc83 · 2/10 · 5 November 2006]

Some people are drilling for oil in Antarctica. This has caused the continent to become unstable, and a giant chunk of it is going to fall off. It has also caused the hole in the ozone layer. Okay, first off, this is idiotic. For another thing, none of this even happens in the movie. They don't have any sort of drilling facility, they've got a pool of water. They don't have any workers, just three guys who never do anything but hang out in the cafeteria and the dorm. All we see is people walking around, standing around, and talking. They TELL us all this stuff is happening. There are also giant beetles that are supposedly dangerous. We don't see them until the last five minutes of the movie. It looks like a couple of characters are holding large turtle shells to their chests and pretending to be attacked.

As if that's not enough, the characters are annoying. The lead female goes on an tiresomely clichéd environmentalist rant about how the whole world is pretty much coming to an end because of this drilling facility. The lead male asks her what proof she has, she says none. She just knows that oil is bad. Good lord.

The only, and I mean ONLY thing worthy of note in this pile of crap is that there's a babe early in the movie who strips down to her bra. I guess she's a well-known model in Germany or something. She looks really good.

Overall this movie is just a joke. There's no plot, just people walking around telling us that things are happening, but we never see anything. If you're making a movie involving oil drilling, why build a set of a pool of water instead of an oil drilling rig? You could just have cockroaches crawling out of the hole, and later they grow, because they're prehistoric or something. There's also no blood, even though it's a movie about creatures killing people. The attacks are laughable, the characters either unnoticeable or else tediously clichéd and unlikable. There's absolutely no scares. The climax is...oh jeez. It's just like the rest of the movie: pathetic.

Absolutely no redeeming values what so ever, even the fx suck.

[SCoRN [UK] · 2/10 · 23 June 2002]

SPOILERS AHEAD - but only so you don't have to suffer this awful monster movie.

Group of scientists, students etc.. travel to reserch lab in the Antartic & get attacked by a rather funny looking monster which resembles a big beetle. That's it.

Didn't expect much from this J C Buechler directed movie but at least the monster fx should have been good, they aren't. It's goreless too, they couldn't even get the 'Alien' style chestbuster scene right.

One of the few movies I've watched that required extended use of the fast forward buttom - during the attack scenes(!)

Absolutely no redeeming values what so ever.

The UK dvd contains the film &...wait for it, a pathetic photo gallery.

Some things ARE better left frozen!

[siu01msb · 27 February 2003]

For the love of God, people please do NOT see this movie!

I can honestly say that this is the worst movie I've seen to date (and I'm a big fan of B-Movie horror films!).

The storyline is basically non-existent and I found myself having to *force* myself to watch the film through to the end. The creature effects are very poor (until about the last 5-10 minutes, and even then they're worse than something from Buffy), and the death scenes are the worst I've ever seen (and let's face it, in this kind of movie, the death scenes are all you watch 'em for).

Overall, a BAD movie (and not in the "bad, but amusing cheesy" way). Stay well clear! And don't say you weren't warned....

Pretty cool little Sci-Fi flick

[image-2 · 10/10 · 6 October 2006]

I just saw this movie on the sci-fi channel last night, and it was really cool. I'm a big fan of the film-maker, and this is one that I missed.

Admittedly the script seemed to have some problems, perhaps too much ex-positional dialogue, but then again it was structured as sort of a 50's style creature feature, and given the film's obviously low budget, maybe that was an aesthetic choice. Anyway, they kept the film moving at a good pace.

The performances were pretty damned good too, considering there wasn't anyone in the cast that I'd ever seen in a movie before.

The big breasted German babe was fine, (wish we could've seen her boobs though).

Other than that, it had some great rubber monsters! A lot better than all that bad CGI crap you see now days. These cool bug creatures, (mutated, prehistoric Trilobites) about the size of a dog seemed to be running around all over the place. Don't now how they did it, but they looked great. I thought the film was a hell of a lot of fun.

Below normal Sci-Fi Channel fare

[slayrrr666 · 6/10 · 5 October 2006]

"Iced Crawlers" is a by-the-book creature feature.

**SPOILERS**

At a secret Antarctic base, teacher Ted Jacobson, (David Milbern) and students Curtis, (Allen Lee Haff) Arianna, (Karen Nieci) Tom, (Howard Holcomb) Kate, (Rebekah Ryan) and Update, (David Lenneman) arrive to do some extra credit work in each of their different fields. The project leaders, Nelson, (Gotz Otto) and Dr. Monica Kelsey, (Alexandra Kamp-Groeneveld) are upset about their lack of experience in the real world, but once their actual mission is revealed, they all express the desire to leave earlier. A strange series of deaths strikes the camp, keeping them trapped in the station. Finally getting a clue as to what's been behind the attacks, they band together to survive the creatures attacking the crew.

The Good News: There is a few decent qualities to this film. First off, I actually enjoyed the creatures in here. It's a big improvement over the usual bugs and giant insect swarms that tend to dominate these kinds of films. Having the creature in here is a bit of a plus and gives it a slight degree of originality in a big sea of unoriginality. They even looked pretty decent, and came across quite well, especially the one at the end. It's a big shame it wasn't on more, it really looked impressive and quite nice looking. It even caused a few halfway nice sequences along the way. The easiest one to determine this was the mineshaft chase, a long chase through the bowels of the station and out into the hallways and down into an elevator, with the frequently-used suspense-building trick of the chased victim frantically pressing a button hoping it would close before it got to the door. Here's a great example of that, and it comes off quite nicely. Even though there isn't a lot of gore, the pretty decent sized body count is a little consolation, offering up some thrills here and there. These are the main things about it, though.

The Bad News: This is just a plain, by-the-numbers creature feature affair. There's really nothing here to distinguish it from just about all the other monster films out there, except for the setting. There's generally no surprises and it plays itself out pretty straightforward, which makes this a pretty skip-able in the stakes and not really be out of the loop. All the plot points are there as well: the threat attacks a loner in the prologue, the introduction of the characters with barely a warning of who's who, the eventual study of the problem that discovers the threat, the discovery of the truth for the expedition, and the quick turnaround by a character previously thought to be bad. It's all been done before to much better results in the other section that this one might not be seen as a top priority much. It's all so predictable that it never even tries to change up the formula, which is what makes these movies fun. That's the biggest problem, but the ending, which not only is so rushed and over so quickly that it barely leaves an impression even after just viewing it, but it also stretches the laws of credibility to the point that it's just unbelievable. In no way would that scenario ever play out in a modern world, and it really doesn't work. An original but annoying trick right before a person is going to get killed where a couple of flashes of earlier scenes with the victim has potential, but it quickly wears old. There's a few more things wrong, but they don't need to be revealed here.

The Final Verdict: This is just a little bit below decent fare for creature feature films, and might hold some interest for hardcore fans of the genre, but will more likely have more of an impact on those that love cheesy films or the low-grade entertainment.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Brief Nudity

not a Good movie in any sense

[black_wolf_1970 · 2/10 · 4 April 2005]

The monsters look like rubber toys, the mother monster looked like I don't know what, and nothing like her babies. The acting was sub standard. There was obvious reference's to Alien, and other much better movies. The premise for the movie was good but it failed when turned into a film. Finding a preserved million's year old insect/monster/alien is a old plot line but it could have been turned into a good movies but this was not it. I am a fan of horror films but this was more of a comedy, the death scenes were so so bad, the "attacks" were almost so bad you wanted to laugh. I am really wondering what a better budget/director could have done with this movie?

Unnecessarily confusing

[BakuryuuTyranno · 2/10 · 6 April 2011]

Early on, one of the regular crewmen of the drilling facility comments on how surprisingly young the recently-arrived workers are.

One replies that the worker isn't that young himself. As opposed to being "that old" himself which would make sense in the context of the previous sentence. Great coherency there.

Later, after disregarding the possibility of killer trilobites on the station, that same girl suggests some DNA sample was from "a pre- millipede or a trilobite or something". Perhaps there was no script, at least not a script containing actual dialogue, and the actors ad-libbed but couldn't hear each other clearly.

The lead man meanwhile has history in oil drilling. This trait is so poorly established it seems he's getting into the spirit of oil drilling (his work colleagues consist of older men)and nothing more.

Everything that happens gives the feel the story happens over a few days minimum, yet supposedly happened within hours. The main characters, newly arrived on a long flight, at no point even appear tired. Yeah, "Deep Freeze" shouldn't be watched by those who value coherency...

Not much gore either because when attacked, victims' lives apparently flash before their eyes although no new footage was shot meaning it consists of flashes of previous scenes.

The scariest part? Most horror films focusing on oil workers are actually worse!

A Useful "How Not To" Guide

[twelvetwo · 4/10 · 19 April 2022]

A film which steals shamelessly from Carpenter's "The Thing"- even to point of using actual footage, this film's main purpose is to show just how great that movie was. Everything "The Thing" got right (i.e. Everything), this gets wrong. Kind of amusing in it's rip-offery, but not really worth your time...

I don't know why people are knocking this movie...

[betdav1 · 6 August 2003]

I don't know why people are knocking this movie. It's one of the best BAD MOVIES I've ever had the uncomfortable pleasure of watching. There was nothing *intentionally* good about this movie. Even German-born Götz Otto's accent seemed fake. It's that bad...or good. I actually had to rewind some of the attack scenes because I couldn't stop laughing.

This movie ranks highly in my Bad Cinema collection, right alongside The Fantastic Four (1994), Captain America (1991), and Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002).

***SPOILER ALERT***

Speaking of laughing at effects, the Big Mama Bug at the end was so funny I nearly soiled myself.

This is not your father's Trilobite

[Phillemos · 3/10 · 22 October 2006]

Low-budget, derivative "Alien" shlock about an Antarctic base which is being tormented by a creature that killing off base members. It starts out scary enough: one guy who is doing menial grunt work and complaining about it gets swept into a liquid vat by the unseen creature and presumably eaten. Others are beginning to disappear too. So far, so good. Until we finally figure out that we're being stalked by a prehistoric trilobite, which is pretty ridiculous because trilobites were a couple of inches long; even the largest trilobites measured up at 2 feet and were still dwarfed by this human-sized thing. No matter. If you're in the mood to to suspend reality and say, OK, let's just run with the economy-sized trilobite concept, the movie has other flaws. The special effects are pretty bad. The trilobite looks like it's made of spray-painted foam. The only scary part of the second half of the movie is when some old, hairy geezer has a shower scene and gets killed by the trilobite. (There are several attractive women in the movie, and they save the shower scene for the old dude with hair on his back?!?!?) Other than that, this is pretty formulaic. We have the "five minutes of scientific explanation" scene, the "climactic confrontation" scene and the "we think we killed it, but unbeknownst to us the monster is up for one last stand" scene (in this case, there's a daddy trilobite that's the size of a dinosaur that has been hiding throughout the movie, apparently until just the right time). The movie is also agonizingly slow until things pick up in the final 15 minutes. Was looking forward to this movie but it rates a disappointing 3.

A poor copy of The Thing

[AH1976 · 1/10 · 12 September 2019]

This film isn't that bad for low budget sci-fi and normally I would give it 3-4 stars but most, if not all, external shots, as well as the plot itself, are taken straight from the far superior The Thing, which wouldn't be an issue except they didn't even bother to credit either the original movie or the amazing John Carpenter.

Do yourself a favour, watch The Thing instead.

"It's like watching primates or something"

[hwg1957-102-265704 · 3/10 · 20 October 2020]

An evil oil company (as opposed to a nice one) drills down into the Antarctic (with dynamite!) and releases some killer trilobites (as opposed to nice ones) who go about the production facility offing people randomly. There is a cast of characters but they are all uninteresting if not downright annoying and the story plays out in the usual monster on the loose in a remote location kind of way. There is one long corridor that appears so much in the film it should have received an acting credit. No shivers of terror in this deep freeze.

B-movie schlock

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 3 October 2019]

DEEP FREEZE is another low budget and overly-familiar monster flick with an icy setting. The setting is the Antarctic, where a group of scientists (played by actors giving dumb performances and sprouting dumb dialogue, so not convincing for a moment) turn up and find themselves both stranded and under attack from an unknown nasty. The monster itself is very poorly animated but certainly gooey, and resembles a giant trilobyte more than anything else. Overall this feels like a riff on Carpenter's THE THING, but made without a fraction of that movie's terrifying feel. B-movie schlock, then, and little more.

Never see monster

[cujorocky · 1/10 · 16 September 2021]

Boring talk piece. Now and then somebody runs with some off screen creature squeezing. You don't see it. Pass on this.

The bar is lowered on sci fi, which helps this movie

[drystyx · 7/10 · 10 October 2021]

Buechler, Boris, Pratt, and Walsh have a bit of success here with a sci fi film about a prehistoric species that lives under the ice in Anarctica.

Not a great piece. Compared to fifties sci fi, it is lacking, but compared to 21st century sci fi, it's easily top of the line. The bar has been lowered that much.

What we have are some fairly credible characters, each in their own circumstances. Of 14 characters, over half never even know there is something out to kill them. It really isn't until the end that two survivors really have any grasp on what is going on.

It's a case of absolute chaos for characters.

For some reason, there is the "flashback at death" vision that accompanies each death. This is not explained. We're led to believe that the monster "troglodyte" reads the visions itself, from the camera angles.

Now, the dialog is mixed. Most of it is okay, certainly much better than the dialog we get in 95% of 21st century sci fi, but there are a few expository speeches. Not enough to be a catastrophe, but enough to notice.

It looks like the aforementioned team had it in mind to make a sequel. That doesn't mean they'll follow through with a sequel.

The characters are have credible motivations for incredible circumstances.

Keep moving - Nothing to see here

[Dr. Gore · 4 September 2003]

*SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT*

"Ice Crawlers" is a complete disaster. Part of me wants to shred this movie point by point but it's just not worth it. Basically a killer bath mat from the Jurassic period attacks some dolts in a big lab. There is no female nudity however we do get to see an incredibly hairy old guy take a shower. He was the true monster in "Ice Crawlers". Staring at his ugly, wolf man body almost made me run to the bathroom. Something was crawling up my throat. The movie makes every possible misstep and comes limping back for more.

Stick this movie in the Deep Freeze. Let future generations dig it out. Who knows? In a thousand years, it may be worth something. But I doubt it. It'll still be "Ice Crawlers".

Truly the worst film in a long time

[mibmob · 20 September 2004]

I am not surprised that there are no goofs for this film as the whole film is a goof. There is no perceptible plot, the FX - rubber "trilobites" (were they carnivorous?) are laughable and the clichés - if you smoke you're first to go, if you have pre-marital sex you're next - are ridiculous. We know who will live and who will die within the first 20 mins and we don't give a monkey's as to who survives. Plan 9 from Outer Space seems like Ridley Scott compared with this heap of hokum. Avoid all films that have Deep at the beginning - Deep Impact, Deep Rising and Deep Freeze are all naff.