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Film: Blood Glacier (Blutgletscher)
Year: 2013
Director: Marvin Kren
Writers: Benjamin Hessler, Marvin Kren and Claudia Kolland
Starring: Gerhard Liebmann, Edita Malovcic and Santos
Review:
This was a movie that I discovered when looking for winter-based horror. I’ll be honest, I almost passed on this since I saw that it was streaming on Tubi and the poster wasn’t great. The name also sounded generic. What changed my mind was that this is from Austria. Since it has a release date of 2013, it doubled as a Traverse through the Threes.
Synopsis: scientists working in the Austrian Alps discover that a glacier is leaking a liquid that appears to be affecting local wildlife.
We start here with a title card stating that in 2014, the last skeptics fall silent against global warming. The climate disaster is worse than ever imagined and Antarctica’s ice will be gone within a decade. The alpine glaciers will disappear. The consequences are unclear, but one thing is known, life on Earth will forever change.
The movie then takes us to meet our group. Janek (Gerhard Liebmann) is the maintenance man for the group. There is an alarm going and he has passed out drunk. He lives in a cabin with his dog, Tinnitus (Santos). He is woken up by Birte (Hille Beseler) to see what is wrong. She is a scientist and she works alongside Falk (Peter Knaack) and Harald (Felix Römer). He looks at the alarm and states that one of the stations is offline. He is tasked to go there with Falk to get it back online. Tinnie comes with them.
It is here that we see the glacier has all but melted. Where it was is this odd red liquid. It is in slushie form. Falk takes samples to test it. Janek works on fixing the equipment on the station when Tinnie goes into a nearby cave. Inside is a fox that is infected with something and it bites the dog. Janek finds both animals and is concerned.
They head back to the station that they work at, relaying what happened. Minister Bodicek (Brigitte Kren) is coming there for a visit. Janek doesn’t think it is a good idea. He is shot down though, because if she doesn’t, they could lose their funding. Even more so if the reason they share is a rabid animal. Birte studies the sample that was brought back, but she can’t make sense of it. She needs a fresh model. Janek denies taking her as night approaches and it isn’t safe, especially with what he calls a ‘rabid’ fox out there.
Things get more complicated from here. Janek learns that his ex-girlfriend Tanja (Edita Malovcic) is coming with the group to their station. He is even more concerned now with the fox that is out there for their safety. This group discovers something even scarier though. They brought back a specimen that is part woodlouse as well as a fox. They try to make sense of what they’re seeing. Janek also reveals that the thing he saw had a beetle face. Birte gives a rough explanation of what could happened and this odd liquid is involved. This nightmare gets even worse as other mutants emerge.
That is where I’m going to leave my recap and introduction to the characters. Where I’ll start then is that I could see people being turned off by the social commentary here. Global warming and the negative effects it has on the world is a hot button topic. This movie is going hard into it being real. I’d say that it is even more exaggerated for the sake of the story. This is from 2013 and set in the year after as if the effects of this phenomena completely melted the glaciers on the Alps. I don’t think you need to believe in this to enjoy the movie and just watch it as a work of fiction.
Now that I have that out of the way, I love the setting here. We are on a mountain where you can only get there by walking/climbing or helicopter. It is supposed to be cold, but I love that it is sticking line with concept. There are lower temperatures due to the altitude. It feels warm up here though and it shouldn’t be. I’ll credit for bringing that all to life with the cinematography. Also sticking with the isolated location, being hurt or sick ramps up the tension since you can’t easily get back to civilization. That is amplified as well by the fact that our characters are trapped and bombarded by mutants.
Let me then go into the science here a bit. We have Birte, Falk and Harald here as our scientific minds. What is interesting there though is we don’t lean into that too much. I think that makes it more enjoyable since we aren’t bogged down trying to explain things with science. What works here is that Birte just explains how she can as to why the fox looks as it does and how they end up with this giant pill bug looking creature. It is from there that we get other monsters like a falcon, a ram-like animal and even a mosquito that is carrying the liquid. This is also going to lead me into social commentary that I wasn’t expecting here.
The other commentary I’m alluding to is government funding and the lengths people will go to keep it. These scientists almost come off as being too smart for their own good. They are at odds with Janek as they don’t want him to share what is going on as it could keep the minister from coming. If she doesn’t then they could lose funding. They are willing to put their lives at risk to continue their research. The scientists try to explain this under the guise of ‘safety of the public’. There is a bit of that and I mean governments are known to lie to their citizens about this. It is used here to trap our characters and it isn’t the worse idea. I will say that it also isn’t new.
I do have a negative though. One part was that on Tubi, this was dubbed. I’m more of a guy who likes to watch movies in their native language with subtitles. There were times that I was taken out of the movie. I also can’t blame them for what is available to me from a streaming service. The other part is that this has such good premises, set up and commentary. This loses steam though. I think for me, this is too ambitious and would be too hard to survive so it loses me. Not enough to ruin this. It just didn’t hold me until the end like I wanted.
I’ll then finish the filmmaking aspects. I’ll confirm here that the cinematography is good. Not only does it capture the setting, but I also thought they frame the attacks well. I think that helps to hide the seams. The practical effects get here with blood and even a surgery scene works. My issue comes from CGI. There are times where I noticed and it took me out. Again, not enough to ruin it. Other than that, there was a great track from the music that gives an eerie atmosphere that I appreciated. The rest worked for what was needed. I did like the use of walkie-talkies and satellite phones as well.
All that is left then is acting, which I thought was solid. Liebmann is great as this guy who has been beaten down by his breakup with Tanja. He has elected to stay as the tech here on this mountain longer than anyone else. It is to avoid dealing with his feelings. That fits his character. Malovcic is solid in her role. She becomes his counterpart as they fight to survive. Santos was a good boy. Beseler, Knaack and Römer work as scientists. Kren and the others in her party are good at ramping up the body count. No one is great here, but I thought they work for what is needed in this creature feature.
In conclusion, this movie has good elements to it. The social commentary about global warming is there, but you don’t need to believe to enjoy this. I also like the idea of how ineffective government can be as well. The acting here is solid enough. The focal should be the mutants, but I do think that takes a bit of a backseat. I’m not fully sure this movie knows what it wants to do. That could also be budgetary. This is still well-made in my opinion. If you like animal run-a-muck movies, I think this is a decent one. Be advised, this is from Austria and I watched it dubbed. I’d recommend it if what I said sounds interesting.
My Rating: 6.5 out of 10