Dr. David Kruipen

Dr. David Kruiper is the hidden main antagonist of the horror film The Thaw. A brilliant scientist that leads a station facility in the Canadian Arctic dedicaced to the study of excavated mammals, his true intentions are actually twisted.

Plot
Nothing is known about Kruiper's backstory, aside that he became a scientist and had a daughter at one point named Evelyn that also became a scientist.

The film begins with a video documentary projected by the doctor,followed by a flashback to when David, his assistant Jane and two other researchers tranquilize a polar bear, then discover the frozen remains of a wooly mammoth. They transport the polar bear to their research station. David then proceeds to call his daughter Evelyn and pleads with her to visit the facility. In the same time, a small group of students under David's tutelage, which consists of a quite reckless girl named Ling, an hot-tempered student named Federico and a smart girl named Atom, are selected to join David's team.

Some days later, some of the team members begin to feel the effects of an unknown illness that they never experienced with before. David orders the helicopter pilot, Bart, not to bring Evelyn inside the station for an unknown reason. Despite this, Evelyn insists, and Bart has no choice but to bring her to the station along with the students.

Jane is later seen shooting and apparently killing David and another researcher, while the students discover that the polar bear died, his body slowly beginning to be swarmed by bugs. Bart is bitten by one of these things while touching the bear's corpse. Evelyn is awakened in the middle of the night by an ATV approaching the station. When she goes to investigate, Jane falls from the helicopter, destroying the helicopter's control panel, thus forcing the team to remain in the base.

The bugs are in fact extremely deadly parasitoids that reproduce very quickly inside their unfortunate hosts and are very cunning, as they bite and infect Ling while she was sleeping by making their way in through the ventilation system. Later, bugs began to painfully burst from Bart and Ling's bodies. Bart attempt to save himself by amputating the infected arm, with no success. Bart and Ling decide to overdose on morphine in order to fall asleep as the bugs swarm over them.

Federico, also bitten by the same parasites that led Bart and Ling to their doom, panics and refuse to be checked for infection. As he is about to shoot Evelyn and Atom, he is shot from behind by David. David then insists they destroy the station. However, Evelyn finds a video David recorded and discovers that David has intentionally infected himself and also planned to have the whole team but his daughter infected in order to study the parasite's effectiveness (which happens to be far better than he expected), preparing to set the bugs loose to teach humanity a lesson about global warming's effects.

As a rescue helicopter finally came to pick up the three, David shows his true colors by locking up his daughter and her friend, but the duo managed to escape. Atom tries to hang on to a helicopter skid but falls to the ground. As the helicopter flies away, Evelyn retrieves Feredico's weapon and shoots down the helicopter, causing it to crash into a building previously doused in gasoline. Atom eventually dies from her wounds, leaving Evelyn as the sole survivor of the research team.

The next day another team arrives and rescues her. Later, as a radio station airs based on Evelyn's reports and warnings, hunter calls his dog away from a dead bird the dog has been eating. Bugs emerge from the bird's body. The closing scene shows the hunter's truck heading towards a large city, hinting that David's goal is indeed going to be fulfilled as the dog will likely contaminate the man, as well as the man's family, and so on. It is unknown, however, if the parasite caused a regional, national or even mondial pandemic, or if it was quickly destroyed after, though the casualties will be probably severe.

Personality
David Kruiper is a misanthrope that has found the ultimate way to punish the human race with the parasite coming from excavations. His motivation for doing so is to avenge the nature as well as to teach humanity a lesson about global warming's effects, though it is unknown if he wants to cause severe casualties, or to destroy mankind as a whole.

Despite his pleasant facade, he is deceptive, untrustworthy, callous and do not care about his student's safety, as he used them as guinea pigs. He doesn't even care about his daughter, as he deliberately attempts to lock her up in the base at the end of the movie, though he attempts to deter her from coming with him in the beginning of the movie.

He is also shown to be suicidal as he infected himself with the parasite.