Check this one out cats n’ creeps…
A meteor crashes in the artic that harbors an alien force… a force that can mimic human beings and is hell bent on bringing all sorts of space madness to a group of isolated scientists at a remote, snowbound facility.
I know what you are thinking, this has to be an uncredited adaptation of 1938 John W. Campbell Jr. novella Who Goes There?… well it’s certainly that whether it admits it or not, but the more obvious inspiration to fright fans would be John Carpenters’ 1982 masterpiece, The Thing, an adaptation of the same (and itself a re-imagining of the 1951 Howard Hawkes version of Campbell’s tale The Thing From Another World).
So yeah, we got a derivative tale here, which can be perfectly fine if something new and exciting is done with the material… but unfortunately Jesse Palangio’s Blood and Snow is absolutely power slammed by it’s budget making it impossible to offer anything even remotely close to the nightmare creations of Rob Bottin for Carpenter’s flick… which is huge as that could’ve made this pic it’s own thing, dig?
Those effects were innovative and groundbreaking and truly made the film special… but here we have no such fun, hell we don’t even get the CG-vomit covered nonsense of 2011’s prequel to the ‘82 version.
What we are left with is nearly two hours of talky-talk (admittedly in many cases very well acted talk from a cast that includes none-other than The Road Warrior’s Vernon Wells)… all lip sizzle with no monster steak.
All isn’t lost here however, as the film displays convincing locations and environmentally appropriate heavy transport (trust me, it helps set the stage more than a shitty snowmobile or whatever), and the film is handsomely shot by Palangio and deftly edited by Robert Gajic.
Also the screenplay courtesy of Rossa McPhillips and Simon Phillips does provide a properly slow-burn narrative fraught with suspense, so aces there!
Ultimately, while being faithful to it’s inspiration, and providing some solid acting and production value, Blood and Snow falls short in offering any unique flavor of it’s own.
