It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Well, this movie is hilarious. Hilariously bad that is. The budget is two million and it shows. The monster, which is the center piece of the movie, just looks terrible, but that's what makes the movie fun. I had to laugh so much the first time they showed it on screen.Of course the movie has no logic whatsoever. The main "plot" is that two truckers have to make one last delivery before the spring comes and then they encounter the monster which was awoken (or whatever) by some sort of mining operation. Then they go and kill it. Done. That's your plot.One scene of the movies has the trucks on the titular ice road and the monster breaking through the ice. Which is all fine and dandy, but you will notice that the ice is not even an inch thick but is supposed to support two 40 ton trucks, which would probably require at least two feet of solid ice to support them.There are a couple other scenes that defy all logic, but that's only to the benefit of the movie, because overall the movie would be pretty boring if not for the terrible action scenes.The rating of course is a so bad it's good rating, as an actual movie you had to rate it 2 or 3 at best.

Up in Alaska, two trucker buddies and a pretty geologist deliver a load of explosives to a diamond mine. When they arrive they find bloody carnage all around. Turns out the miners unearthed some kind of dinosaur lizard thing and it's not happy. A cheesy made-for-TV movie that's enjoyable in spite of its flaws. This is in large part due to the main actors. Dylan Neal and Ty Olsson play the truckers. The two play well off one another and make for believable buddies. Olsson gets the unfortunate task of playing the stoic hero and seems to be taking this whole thing entirely too seriously at times. Neal is the best part of the movie, giving a clichéd macho douchebag character some charisma. Cutie Brea Grant is very likable and manages to rise above the material quite well. The rest of the cast is made up of bland Canadian actors; the most recognizable of which is Michael Hogan from Battlestar Galactica. The special effects are, not surprisingly, terrible. The monster is a cheap CGI cartoon. The movie's not scary in the least and it barely tries to be. The horror elements in this are worthy of the low IMDb score. The action scenes aren't impressive, either. Really the overall production is of poor quality. Still, it's one of the better SyFy movies I've seen because it has likable leads and a healthy dose of "so bad it's good" humor. Keep in mind, most SyFy movies are bottom-of-the-barrel crap so my score for this is grading on a curve.

Ice Road Terror is set in Alaska & starts at a diamond mining site where the workers have set explosives deep in the permafrost, the resulting explosion exposes a deep pit & from which emerges a giant prehistoric Lizard creature that then rampages through the site killing & eating everyone. Meanwhile truckers Neil Conry (Dylan Neal) & Jack Simmons (Ty Olsson) are making the several hundred mile trip to the mining site in order to deliver a cargo of explosives as well as giving environmentalist Rachel Harris (Brea Grant) a free lift, once they arrive at the site Neil & Jack discover the carnage with severed limbs & blood strewn everywhere. Before long the Lizard dinosaur thing show's up & wants to eat them, they get back in their trucks & drive away but the creature follows them. Will Neil & Jack make it back to safety?Directed by Terry Ingram this is yet more Creature Feature crap from the SyFy Channel, they just seem to have an endless conveyor belt of this rubbish that poops one out couple of weeks. Well lets start off by saying that since this a SyFy Channel creature feature it's almost certain to be a pile of crap so the only question that needs asking or answering about Ice Road Terror is just how big a pile of crap is it? All I can say is that a herd of Elephants couldn't produce a bigger pile of crap than this, no if's but's or maybe's. As many of you will have noticed the title Ice Road Terror is strikingly similar to the popular US reality television series Ice Road Truckers which I admit I haven't seen but it's obvious Ice Road Terror was ripping-off the title Ice Road Truckers & that's just about the most imaginative aspect of this sorry little film that is as generic & dull as they come. OK, lets examine the script a little closer. Some sort of giant man eating monster/dinosaur/animal is brought to life by stupid people, check. We have a hero & a scientist girl who are put into danger when they come up against said creature, check. The situation our heroes find themselves in get worse as they are stranded miles from anywhere with no way to contact the outside world for help, check. Various bit part character's are killed along the way, check. Eventually the creature is defeated by out surviving boy & girl team, check. Predictable, boring, dumb, pointless, badly made, repetitive & a waste of 90 odd minutes I really didn't think that much of Ice Road Terror. Basically it sucks, a lot.Ice Road Terror is very badly made as well, the CGI computer dinosaur effects are poor but the editing is terrible with scenes really not making any sense. The scene when Rachel has to jump between trucks is laughable, also when Jack jumps from his who ends up driving his? When he falls on the ground how does he suddenly appear on the roof? How does the dinosaur suddenly appear on the roof of the truck earlier anyway? Why does it not smash into the cabin at the end? Why, when the explosives catch fire in the back of the truck, is there a little trail of flames from the back of the trailer? The fire is at the other end of the truck for God's sake! Also, those explosives would have went up in seconds & blew them all to kingdom come. The CGI computer scenes of the truck skidding & sliding over the hole in the ice made by the dinosaur is awful, there's no logic to anything that happens & why does the dinosaur see everything in orange? One moment it's on the ground & the next there's a high angle POV from the dinosaur that makes it seem like it's flying! The whole film is poorly made, poorly thought out & not to put too finer a point on it but is total crap. There's a bit of gore, there's some blood splatter, a decapitated head, a guy ripped in half & various severed limbs scattered around.The IMDb says Ice Road Terror had a budget of about $2,000,000 which I find impossible to believe, would it have turned out this bad if had a budget like that? If it did a budget of a couple of million it certainly wasn't spent on locations, special effects or good actor's. The acting is pretty bad, apparently filmed at Britannia Beach in British Columbia in Canada.Ice Road Terror is even worse than what the SyFy Channel usually show under the mistaken opinion that they are films, boy this is bad with awful editing, awful CGI & a terrible script. Not even worth bothering with if it's on telly for free.

Do ya think the SyFy Channel is even aware that all it's original flicks have pretty much ... scratch that ... have exactly the same plots and characters and simply plug in some new creature into the formula? I think they're fully aware of this and they embrace it. This way they can keep the budgets of all their Saturday night originals roughly the same (in the $1.5- $2mil range). With ICE ROAD TERROR we get the same plot and characters we've come to expect and we even get another prehistoric creature freed from the ice (more on this in a minute). But what makes ICE ROAD TERROR stand out from the pack is the fact that it's fun ... really fun. I found myself having more fun with this one than I have with a SyFy flick in a really long time. Let's find out why.While blasting in the arctic for diamonds some prehistoric creature was released that lived under the ice and snow. The creature is angry and really hungry ... really hungry. As the creature tears its way through the workers at the site, we flash over to two ice truckers Jack (Ty Olsson; who was in TV's BATTLESTAR GALACTICA & the SyFy Original BEHEMOTH) and Neil (Dylan Neal; from DAWSON'S CREEK) who're loading up to haul a huge batch of explosives to the diamond mine site -- a site that is at the end of a very long ice road. Tagging along is a large-chested scientist-environmentalist Rachel (Brea Grant; who was in Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN 2 & 16 episodes of TV's HEROES). I mean come on; ya gotta have the female love interest for one of these rugged truckers who has a heart of gold!!There's some harrowing moments as we watch the trucks struggle on the ice road and wonder if they're gonna make it (yeah right). But the real fun begins once they get to the diamond mine site. Mostly everyone is dead and our threesome of heroes quickly find out there's a huge creature chomping on limbs and tearing apart bodies. So they high tail it out of there and the creature, which is some mythical Inuit legend, follows them for hundreds of miles to a cabin in the woods. Here the trio, as well as the couple who live at the cabin, make their last stand against the creature. There's sympathetic characters who die; heroic characters who sacrifice themselves for the others; and the standard last man/woman standing who finally get so angry they kill the creature. There's nothing new here ... ... except I found myself having a really fun time!! The film moves at a great pace and gives us lots of action. We wait all of five minutes before we see the creature (which as far as I can make out is called a "Wangchoke;" seriously) and it starts tearing apart the cast just as quickly. Plus writer Keith Shaw (who also wrote the very fun MALIBU SHARK ATTACK) and director Terry Ingram weren't afraid to show off a little blood, guts, and gore. The camera doesn't turn away as the creature rips people apart and throws around body parts and I was pleasantly surprised by the gore content. Of course this is no DEAD ALIVE, but for a SyFy Original we get some pretty fun gory moments.Most noticeable here is the pacing. We don't get the typical "let's meet the characters for a while" scenes. We meet the characters and get to know them while they're fighting for their lives. The scenes on the ice road are pretty good (in a silly way) as the creature dives and re- surfaces in and out of the ice like some frigid version of the beasts from TREMORS. And of course there's some stuff that just doesn't follow. Example: You'd think Jack, who's an experienced ice trucker, would spend more than five minutes and use more than a bungee cord to secure the explosives in his truck!! His truck catches on fire and he and Rachel must jump into the cab of Neil's truck while they're still driving. After making them jump from one moving truck to another, Neil then decides he needs to stop to check something out. So why didn't he just stop and let them walk to the truck in the first place??!!But the real fun comes when they make their way to one of Jack's old friends who luckily has the only cabin in about a 500 mile radius!! There they make their stand against the Wangchoke (I swear that's what it's called). Another stand out element in ICE ROAD TERROR is the acting. Everyone involved does a great job and they all look like they're having a really fun time. This energy was infectious and you'll feel it!! The Wangchoke is of course 100% CGI, but it looks way better than the typical SyFy Original. Not since the giant spiders in ICE SPIDERS have I been impressed by a CGI creation. The Wangchoke has realistic movements and has a lot of details in it's design.For all intents and purposes I should be writing my typical "skip it" review for ICE ROAD TERROR. But due to solid performances, a good looking and scary CGI monster, a really fast pace, and lots of spraying blood and gory, meaty looking body parts being thrown around, ICE ROAD TERROR is a really fun "giant creature attacks" flick. Nice job guys and keep 'em coming like this one!!Please note that I've given ICE ROAD TERROR, a SyFy Original, a higher rating that SUPER 8. Shame on you J.J. Abrams!!Reviewed by Scott Shoyer