Reviewed by Geno McGahee
Skiing can be dangerous. How many times do you hear about a person skiing running into a tree? It happens all of the time, but you never hear about skiers getting stuck on ski lifts and freezing to death, but Writer/Director Adam Green explores this scenario in FROZEN. Green is no stranger to horror, writing HATCHET, which didn’t make me want to watch FROZEN , but since it was on the Netflix instant watch, I elected to give it a chance and I’m glad that I did.
Joe (Shawn Ashmore), his girlfriend Parker (Emma Bell) and his best buddy, Dan (Kevin Zegers) are on a ski trip, and are short of money and elect to bribe the ski lift operator to give them the lift for a reduced price. He agrees, but when they ask to do it again at closing time, they get stuck high above the resort and forgotten about. The power goes out and the temperature drops and it seems that death is imminent, but the trio isn’t going to give up.
Joe looks down at the enormous drop, but thinks that he can make the jump and find his way down the hill to safety and become the hero. Parker is suffering from hypothermia and is in bad need of medical attention, which prompts Joe to take the plunge. When he lands, he badly breaks both legs. The bones are sticking out of the skin and he is in extreme pain. He should have rolled when he landed. Don’t people do that that parachute? I know he wasn’t wearing a parachute, but the same theory holds true here. Land and then roll Joe!
With one suffering from hypothermia and another with broken legs, it doesn’t seem that it can get much worse, but that’s when the wolves show up and (spoiler) eat Joe alive. The two watch on in terror and then proceed to blame each other for the death. The two reconcile and come to the realization that there will be nobody to help them and that they have to help themselves. Dan elects to climb the lift and grab onto the cable and climb over to the pole with a ladder to the ground and safety…well, some wolves have to be contended with and they are still hungry.
Dan grabs his snowboard and slides down the hill, but when he never returns, Parker has to find her own way down and benefits from the ski lift breaking and dropping down, but it doesn’t hit the ground. She can safely jump down but that freaking lift falls on her foot and now she must crawl down. On the way down (spoiler), she crawls past the gnawed up corpse of poor Dan. He almost made it. I kept thinking GRIZZLY MAN. Have you seen that documentary? A guy goes and lives with grizzlies and then they eat him. They didn’t show the pictures of his eaten body, so I had to go on line and find them. Yuck! Dan’s body looked similar to the real thing. Good going special effects/gore team! You did a spot on job!
Overall, FROZEN is OK. It’s a big step up from HATCHET, featuring believable performances, with the most notable being Kevin Zegers. The wolves were pretty convincing too. So, props to the trainer of the wolves.
I haven’t seen OPEN WATER, but it did well and seems to have inspired this hopeless tragic movie, and I did enjoy it. It was intense and although the dialogue was mediocre at times, at times it was incredibly compelling. I recommend this.
Scared Stiff Rating: 6/10. What a snow job.
