Movie Review: Frozen (2010)

A truly terrifying film

This isn't horror. This isn't suspense. Frozen is terror and writer/director Adam Green has taken what initially seems like a 15-minute premise and turned it into a solid 93-minute feature that is oftentimes hard to watch even though almost all of the disturbing content happens off screen.

Instead of blood-soaked visuals Green turns up the sound as if to say, "No, I won't show it to you, but you're going to have to listen." It's gut-wrenching, and as you watch the actors' concerned faces Green makes you listen for a couple beats longer than anticipated to the point you've almost gotten used to it. It's at this point you almost want the camera to pan toward the carnage. You want the feeling you felt to be paid off in some way, whether you get that pay-off or not is for you to find out as I suggest any fan of such genre fare seek this film out.

Frozen hinges on the idea of three twenty-somethings stuck on a mountain ski lift as they try to catch one last run before calling it a day. Stranded on a Sunday night with the promise no one is coming back until the next Friday, the trio must figure out a way to get down from their predicament or risk freezing to death. It's a premise that's simple and would seemingly require only minutes of screen time, but Green manages to work the human element into it just enough to justify its feature length.

Where the film slightly falters is in Green's inability to be entirely clear of the situation we are walking into. Only small hints are delivered early on that this isn't exactly the ritziest of ski resorts. An off-hand comment clues us in. Cheap lift tickets that can be made even cheaper by slipping the lift operator some cash and the rickety and aged ski lift that stalls early on, foreshadowing the operator error that will follow, also detail the kind of operation we are watching.

Also, Green doesn't exactly use the dangerous heights of the situation to his benefit. There are no real establishing shots to give us a sense of just how far from the ground they actually are. A moment in the film gives us a better understanding of just how high they are, but Green really missed an opportunity for added tension using people's natural fear of heights to his advantage.

Fortunately, none of this bothered me, and I can't see it bothering any audience member truly paying attention as clues are given to sort out the situation as I have clearly mentioned. These clues just aren't hitting you over the head, which seems to be the cause for some of the more negative reviews I have read of this film coming out of Sundance, but aware and imaginative audiences shouldn't have any such problems.

To the height argument, Green could have used a sound stage or green screen to pull off some of these scenarios more effectively. He could have utilized some 360-degree camerawork and CG backgrounds to give an audience a better sense of the height, but it would have been an obvious cheat that would have taken audiences out of the film. It would have become another effects driven, second-rate horror you would expect out of a studio such as Screen Gems. Who's actively seeking more of that?

Instead, Frozen felt almost like a documentary in its delivery. Limited camera angles give you a "being there" perspective, but had Green had more money and a bigger budget this would have been an insane film had it been shot for IMAX and truly delivered on the scale of being stranded on a mountain side in below-freezing weather. It's a pipe dream of an idea, but I couldn't get the thought out of my mind as the on screen terror sent my imagination running wild.

Playing the three stranded skiers are Shawn Ashmore, Emma Bell and Kevin Zegers. Outside of some rough dialogue early on, there is a back-and-forth in the middle of the film that comes off seriously genuine as Ashmore tells a story of his past with Zegers's character and Bell considers the effect her death will have on her pet. It was a moment where traditional horror films would just go for gore, throw in a sex scene or have some idiot you didn't care for blathering on about how they didn't want to die. Instead, Green brought a truthful human moment into the film by writing some solid dialogue, which his actors pulled off excellently, carrying the story into the third act.

Frozen is a genre film that has its flaws, but it shows some major signs of a director with a true understanding of what it means to set up a story, what to show the audience and what to hold close to the chest for greater impact later in the film. There are some rough moments to sit through for queasy audiences — it's certainly not for everyone — but I can't begin to say how impressed I was, especially considering Green's 2007 slasher Hatchet didn't do much for me and certainly didn't show this kind of promise.