The idea for the film came from an experience his brother, Michael, had with his girlfriend that involved beer and bedbugs. He told Dread Central, “I think ultimately where this story comes from is the idea or, more accurately, the feeling of vulnerability [...] of our species and how we’re about to experience the wrath of Mother Nature as a result of global warming. Remaining faithful to our inspiration [about bed bugs], we chose to make Mother Nature’s device the most hideous parasite we could imagine.”

You mean, worse than bed bugs?

Bwa ha ha ha ha! Bwa ha ha!!!

The Thaw is about a young woman (MacIsaac) who heads to the Arctic with a group of students on a research mission, headed by Dr. Kruipen (Kilmer). The research team discovers that a melting polar ice-cap, caused by global warming, has released a deadly prehistoric parasite on the world after the remains of a wooly mammoth are released from the ice and thawed. The students must then find a way to save the rest of the world from the deadly parasite before it reaches the rest of civilization and causes a potentially global epidemic catastrophe.

Co-writer Michael Lewis, in an interview with the Tribune at the movie set Tuesday, said the original story was called Bed Bugs and didn’t include a wooly mammoth.

He had been living in England with his girlfriend and his brother Mark Lewis, the director and other co-writer, when the brothers decided to write a horror script exercise.

But the bed bugs idea came from the director’s lived experience of bed bugs:

“My girlfriend and I went to Prague and we got bed bugs,” he said, adding that his girlfriend had several bites after they stayed at a hostel.

The story took place in the far north and originally didn’t include the concept of a wooly mammoth. Instead, the bugs found safety in another creature.

“In order to survive, they’d go into polar bears.”