Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
Apparently way back in the day there as ancient ship NOT called the Edmund Fitzgerald, because I can’t remember the real name of the ship, and this ship got lost during an exploratory arctic mission. What happened to this ship remains a mystery to this very day, at least to anybody in this movie ‘Arctic Predator’ or ‘Frost Giant’, because we the audience knows that the ship was attacked by a monster made of gaseous ice that came from space. Or something. I’ll tell you right now that my favorite thing about this movie was not the Ice Monster but the haughty English accents affected by the crew of that ship not named the Edmund Fitzgerald. Outstanding.
Hundreds upon hundreds of years later we meet hardworking anthropological geologist Dr. JC (Dean Cain) who has been searching for this ship his entire life. One of his quad great grandparents captained that ship and while he didn’t die in that attack, there is no known record of his account of what happened during that expedition. With his grant money almost all drained JC is about to go on back home until Dr. Hasslein (Steve Waddington) and his amazing nuclear robot finds a mass buried deep in the ice. Hooray!
While this is fantastic news professionally for JC, personally speaking he’s not in a good way. He is in love with Dr. Sedna (Lucy Brown) but Dr. Sedna does not love him back. Dr. Sedna didn’t mind giving up the cookie on a temporary basis to JC as she worked at this facility to stomp out global warming, but love isn’t in the Rolodex for this bitchy, rude woman.
Anyway, the incredibly diverse crew of this arctic expedition descends into the cavern created by their suspect CGI unearthing vehicle and finds the ship, a ship that will hold millions of dollars in untold treasures, dozens of frozen dead bodies and finally provide closure for JC via the frozen journal of the archeologist that championed this mission back in the day. It also set the Frost Giant free.
One by one the members of the expedition start disappearing and eventually the crew realizes that it’s because of something they set free from beneath the earth. They could escape, but the arctic storm of the century is upon us. They could melt the beast made of ice, but would you believe that’s exactly what this beast wants? The Science behind it is complicated. Which is a fancy way of saying I didn’t understand it.
All we do know is that beast wants heat. Any kind of heat, like body heat. And while it looks dumb it does have the ability to learn even though I don’t think it has a brain. Now it’s sucking the heat out of the facility and the generator is running low. I know, let’s send the two black guys out there with the Ice Beast to get some gas to fuel up the generator! They actually volunteered for this, or at least the script had them volunteer for this. Worst still is that this thing can also turn into steam and travel
through the air ducts. That little super power didn’t become necessary until this same script deemed it as such. It seems the secret to defeating this beast lies in the journal and will leave JC facing Homer’s Dilemma, just as his forefather faced many years ago… Die with honor… or live in shame. His forefather was a complete bitch but lived a long a fruitful life in case you didn’t know.
As far as Sci-Fi original movies go, ‘Arctic Predator’ wasn’t all that bad really. I don’t know what came first, ‘Frost Giant’ or ‘Arctic Predator’ but ‘Arctic Predator’ is the title that flashed across the screen when I watched this movie and it’s a more apt title since the beast was about as tall as I was and I’m no giant. I have the presence of a giant, know what I’m saying? But stature wise, not really.
But while ‘Arctic Predator’ wasn’t all that bad, and we’ve said this same thing far too many times in regards to these types of movies, it wasn’t all that good either. I liked the fact that we had a monster to deal with and I’m sure glad that the globing warming thing was only touched upon and not a major issue in the movie. Not that we have a problem with Global Warming but we’ve seen enough of these movies to know that if Global Warming was a central subject, then we’d be stuck looking at people look at computer monitors trying to solve some poorly presented conceptual problem. Big monster shows up on scene, people run and people die over and over again. That usually works. Admittedly the monster looked like crap and whatever CGI was substituting for in this movie was clearly CGI, such as the snowflakes falling from the sky. If you can’t make realistic snowflakes then we are all in trouble.
The performances turned in by the cast were good enough to get us through this thing, though nothing was all that spectacular. Except for those outstandingly haughty British accents whenever this movie flashbacked. In fact the flashbacks were the best part of the movie. If the whole movie had been a flashback and then on occasion just flash forwarded, you know, like ‘Titanic’ did, I’m thinking we would’ve had a mini classic on our hands. As it is what we have with ‘Arctic Predator’ is a run of the mill completely average Sci-Fi Channel movie. In regular movie terms that means it’s sub-mediocre. In Sci-Fi Channel movie terms this means it’s damn good.
