Director: John Adams, Toby Poser
Year: 2024
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Arriving in Serbia for a mission, a drilling crew arrives looking to prepare a special location into a potential fracking site in the future, but when they uncover a frozen soldier in the operation with a body-hopping parasite inside must try to contain the creature it completes its reproduction.
Review:
This was a fairly fun and enjoyable genre effort. One of the main factors to like with this one comes from the stellar setup that brings the group together with several intriguing storylines being brought into the fray. The initial exploits of the crew being sent there to evaluate the condition of the site into a potential source for a fracking operation in the future gives everyone a great starting point to have the group meet up in a remote camp in the wilderness which brings about the discovery of the body. This stars up the fine secondary storyline where the body begins to showcase signs of still being alive despite being alive for several centuries and the series of tests that try to look into the true cause of the person’s status which triggers all sorts of alarms about not just what caused the character to stay alive but also the potential damage to the operation.
This has quite a lot to like as well within the confines of the creature feature realm. The abilities of the parasite being a cocooning organism that keeps its victims alive once they become infected with it who can then manipulate the host to do whatever it wants while giving off several hints that they've become a host to the creature so there’s a lot of intriguing biological facts given about the organism. It all comes off rather logical as well, how the different investigative tactics look into the history of the creature’s presence, how they can determine the origins of it and what’s going on with it running wild through the various members of the facility which includes some great effects work on the infection sequences where it defends itself or possesses a body to move to it’s next host. These are gruesome and bloody enough to be quite enjoyable, providing the film with some enjoyable points about it.
This one does have some immensely problematic factors about it. The biggest issue here is the lack of urgency in what's going on when the group initially discovers the presence of the parasite as barely anything happens with the discovery. The discovery of the creature and how it becomes a body-hopping parasitic being looking for new hosts to carry on their line, endangering not just the camp but humanity as a whole with the implication of the escape into the world at large, manages to carry with it no big attempts at ramping up tension or thrills in the revelation. Due to the constant conversations about what’s going on and the fact that they talk about it in the presence of the infected who never try to engage in any kind of physical superiority over the crew, there’s a decidedly tame feeling during this section which is the opposite of how they should be presented. With a finale that goes for more sympathy than it does anything else which is a weird way to go about it, these are what hold this one down overall.
Overview: ***.5/5
A rather solid if somewhat problematic genre effort, this one has enough to hold itself up over a couple of issues that are present and keep it from being what it could’ve been. Those with a big appreciation for this type of genre effort, are curious about it, or are fans of the creative crew will have the most to like with it while others turned off by these factors should heed caution.
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