The Ice Demon (2021) (Russia)

⭐️1/2

Two campers dealing with the harsh Russian winter uncover a body buried under the snow in the middle of the frozen wilderness. They move the corpse so they can camp down a bit more comfortably. You may find that disrespectful but the intense winter storm has left the campers very little options. As they attempt to sleep through the worst of it, the believed-to-be corpsicle shows up in their tent, scaring the living hell out of one of the women. The other lady shows up creepily opening the tent from the outside with half her face frost-bitten to high-hell. As expected, that’s a great time for the music to swell as the title card hits. We then join a game of Russian roulette for the ownership of a stray dog between a group of idiots and a young girl who is moody. Sounds Russian enough. Her stepfather responds to the gun firing and takes the girl (and her new dog) home. We rejoin that corpse we saw in the opening, lying on a coroner’s slab, ready to be autopsied. The doctor makes his first incision and is horrified to see the supposed long-dead corpse begin bleeding. He immediately has his assistant run off for medical aid… this stiff is alive! Sounds Russian enough. The stepfather and daughter are part of an unhappy family, with mother being the chief of medicine at the local hospital. This not-so-dead corpse is her missing husband and the three of them rush to the hospital when they are made aware of his shocking reappearance. It’s another chance for these folks to be all moody and cranky. Sounds Russian enough. Folks wish to study this unique case of survival (the dude’s been frozen for probably close to ten years) but his ex-wife demands to take his comatose ass home. She gets her way and it doesn’t take long for the slow-burning creeps to kick in. The daughter researches comas but in the form of pseudoscience, so think more astral projection as opposed to minimal brain activity. She attempts to contact her father through spooky “science” and there’s definitely something hanging around the house that’s a bit out of the ordinary. Step-daddy begins (more like continues) to act like a real prick, mama just pouts and broods and the daughter uses children’s blocks to speak with her vegetable papa. Following a mini-stroke for the stepfather, mom starts acting like an asshole as opposed to her usual vibe of distant and constipated. A flashback fills in the tragic pieces of spousal abuse and nothing of interest happens as we, the viewer at home, fight off sleep. A doctor gives the unlikely diagnosis that the comatose man is mostly a puppet for something and is working towards some nefarious ends. Russian doctors are pretty cool. Mama gets possessed or something and wields a meat tenderizer, minimally terrorizing the cast for a couple minutes. The thing then decides to drag on past an acceptable end point to deliver the tired message that mental illness is, in fact, the real monster. Suitably cold and awkwardly dubbed (but everyone is gravel-mumbling like Christian Bale’s Batman so I guess it doesn’t matter), Ice Demon would probably hit a solid level of unease if it weren’t so focused on melodrama and sad-sackary. There’s atmosphere but it’s a bit wasted on the limp story, long takes and stilted dialogue. Even if it were in its original language, it would still feel like a wannabe European crime drama lacking a stellar cast to bring it all home. For a slow-burn thriller to work, there has to eventually be fire. Leave it to fucking Russia to forget that.