Thirst (2015)

Film review #620

Director: Greg Kiefer

SYNOPSIS: A group of young delinquents are sent into the wilderness to a couple who aim to toughen them up and make them responsible members of society by hiking through the wilderness. Unfortunately, lying in wait is an alien creature that aims to suck them dry, and with no means to contact the outside world, the group must try to survive before they are all hunted down…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Thirst is a 2015 sci-fi horror film. Opening up like every other horror film, we see an nameless character get murdered after discovering some sort of alien blob…thing. Cut to the film proper, a group of delinquent youths have been sent by their parents or whomever to the middle of the Californian wilderness (i.e. nowhere) to be subjected to a ten-day hike by a couple who run a business of toughening up such youths to make them productive members of society: that’s the story anyway, but it seems very dubious and highly illegal. Anyway, the group eventually stumbles upon an alien that wants to suck people dry (?), and they must find a way to survive and escape. It is, in short, every other creature/monster-based horror movie, with no real surprises or novelties to make it interesting. The plot points are predictable, and a lot of the film is just a lot of shouting and running around the middle of nowhere without being able to generate any real sense of atmosphere or terror. It’s not even hilariously bad, it’s just boring and nonsensical.

The characters are the usual bunch of horror unlikeable stereotypes: they don’t really develop as characters, and their deaths aren’t really impactful. One character in particular does virtually nothing and survives near to the end of the film, and I wonder if someone just forgot to do anything with them. Killing off the two “adult” characters could have been an interesting twist that forced the younger ones to grow up, but it doesn’t really happen. The alien is obviously a Xenomorph rip-off with no attempt to be original. For some reason, it’s also half-metal, which makes no sense. We’re given no sense of what this alien is or how it works, which isn’t too much of a deal insofar as we don’t need to know it’s motivations, but it would be nice to give the alien some substance to make it stand out.

Obviously made on a budget, the film just consists of the cast wandering about in the middle of nowhere as mentioned, and the special effects are unconvincing at best. No jump scares, no atmosphere, no tension, and no originality, Thirst won’t quench the need for a good horror.