It moves quickly; has good writing in the form of a tight plot and some believable characters; and features interesting Utah landscapes and respectable special effects - pound for dollar (and it's free on SyFy), it's a worthy effort.
The weakness is the inability of the director to control the mood in a perfectly competent manner. This inability is often seen in movies of this genre, and while THIRST doesn't make as many mistakes as other, lesser entries, the mistakes are certainly there.
Here we have a group of people being terrorized and slaughtered by an alien creature, and yet they still have the wherewithal to make bad jokes at random moments and to seem oblivious to the epoch-making mystery of it all.
To see what a grade A production can do with this kind of material, watch the 2011 version of THE THING. After her first horrific encounter with the creature, the young paleontologist gazes up at the stars and says, "I'll never look at them in the same way again..."
An even better example of tight control is the Tom Cruise masterpiece EDGE OF TOMORROW. The humor is always there, but it's always apropos.
The weakness is the inability of the director to control the mood in a perfectly competent manner. This inability is often seen in movies of this genre, and while THIRST doesn't make as many mistakes as other, lesser entries, the mistakes are certainly there.
Here we have a group of people being terrorized and slaughtered by an alien creature, and yet they still have the wherewithal to make bad jokes at random moments and to seem oblivious to the epoch-making mystery of it all.
To see what a grade A production can do with this kind of material, watch the 2011 version of THE THING. After her first horrific encounter with the creature, the young paleontologist gazes up at the stars and says, "I'll never look at them in the same way again..."
An even better example of tight control is the Tom Cruise masterpiece EDGE OF TOMORROW. The humor is always there, but it's always apropos.