Blood Glacier is a simply conceived horror film that swings markedly from the curiously interesting to the strangely disappointing. Focussing on a team of scientists studying a glacier high in the mountains Martin Kren’s film examines the relationship between man and nature but ultimately relies too much on familiar horror tropes as his inspiration and sadly fails even to generate interest in these.
Janek (Gerhard Liebmann) is a world weary maintenance man at a research facility high in the German Alps. Separated from his scientist companions both physically and philosophically, his extended period of self induced isolation is interrupted when one of the distant monitoring booths malfunctions. When he journeys to check the instruments he discovers a strange red glacier, which has apparently been exposed by the retreating main ice flow.
Inside a newly formed cave Janek finds a fox showing signs of serious infection and after his dog is attacked he returns to the main base as quickly as possible. After analysing some of the samples Janek brought back the scientists are divided on their findings and soon personal greed challenges noble virtue, and in the light of an imminent minister’s publicity visit they must make a decision whether to reveal their discovery or not.
The influences in Blood Glacier are clear with The Thing being very much at the forefront. There is little originality on display here with a “stew” of multiple organisms of unknown origin that affect multiple hosts in numerous and highly unpleasant ways. The infected creatures that range from the aforementioned fox to beetles via crows become increasingly bloodthirsty and these hybrids begin to attack the remote humans presumably looking for further hosts to contaminate.
The third act of the film then resorts to the usual mix of screaming and running and therein lays the problem. For much of the film Kren creates tension and intrigue through character dysfunction and implies both sincere and insincere motivations. What begins as an interesting and for the most part enjoyable little horror film then ignores the discipline it has so cleverly utilised and becomes a run-of-the-mill and poorly executed creature movie. This disappointing turn continues right to the unsatisfactory conclusion which even contains a slightly embarrassing added moment that will leave any audience however experienced in horror films groaning and sighing.
OVERALL SUMMARY
There are a great many things to like in Blood Glacier but the good work unravels quickly towards something of a distasteful ending and unfortunately this is the lasting memory from the film. The poorly implemented B-movie tropes are distracting and this is a film that may struggle to find an audience given the range of better options currently available.
