Critics reviews

Marvin Kren's Blood Glacier, a shameless rip-off of Carpenter's The Thing, is fun. Gerhard Liebmann is no Kurt Russell, but he does his best. Old-school FX. Angela Merkel–esque environment minister proves to be the toughest of a group besieged by mutants in an Alpine research station. Comic highlight: female ministerial aide eats banana while having hysterical fit. German title, Blutgletscher, is unpronounceable.

As it programmatically works its way toward the unexpected but doggedly stupid resolution to Janek (Gerhard Liebmann) and Taja's personal travails, Blood Glacier straddles a very awkward line between creature feature, conspiracy thriller, and domestic drama, all without novelty or suspense.

Blood Glacier is a resourceful riff on John Carpenter's The Thing and Larry Fessenden's Last Winter... A briskly entertaining, old-fashioned monster movie, it wrings plenty out of its clapboard set, rubber effects, and omnipresent red LED eyes.

Despite its stripped-down set-up, The Station fails to play to its strengths. They're all there: the dirty, unglamorous interiors; the remote, mountainous location; the hidden creatures that burst forth. So why bother with the relationship between a troubleshooting technician and a young woman travelling with her family? Both versions of The Thing had something in common: their directors understood that less is more. The Station tries to do too much but it doesn't go deep: it's all surface.