Frozen Movie Review

Frozen (2010)

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Written by: Adam Green
Directed by: Adam Green
Starring: Shawn Ashmore, Emma Bell, Kevin Zegers
Rated: R
Watch the trailer

Plot
Three skiers stranded on a chairlift are forced to make life-or-death choices, which prove more perilous than staying put and freezing to death.

Verdict
There is nothing fun about this movie. It's a situation that starts out bad and only gets worse. It's unsettling and at times gory. This rides a simple premise the entire run time and does so effectively. If this sounds interesting, you're in for a ride.
It depends.

Review
No, this is not the animated Frozen (2013), this is the survival horror movie made a few years earlier.

This takes a bit too longer to get into it. The only reason I'm watching is to see them stranded. While some of the introduction is to establish the characters, it certainly doesn't need as much time as it takes. It's just padding.

Emma Bell, Kevin Zegers, Shawn Ashmore play Parker, Dan, Joe

Three college aged kids get trapped on a ski-lift at night. They are isolated, trapped, and no one knows they are even there. It's a great premise. With the three of them you get to explore the resulting emotions, fear, resolve, speculation, and planning. They're hoping someone knows they are trapped, but unfortunately they don't know what has happened. They have hope, but the audience knows that is misplaced.

It's no surprise that the situation starts poorly and only gets worse. Rescue seems impossible, and nothing goes well here. They get more desperate as the situation becomes more hopeless. This doesn't show much initially, but what it implies does plenty of work. While you could disagree with the decisions the three make, when you're frantic and scared you make stupid decisions. The other side of that are some of the random thoughts they have trying to distract themselves from the situation.

I didn't think we'd see the next morning, but we do. At this point the movie is almost body horror. This is an uncomfortable movie. It remains tense throughout which is impressive since most of the movie takes place on the ski-lift. What makes this horror movie so scary is that it's not that far removed from reality. Just being on a ski-lift can induce a wave of panic when you think about how high you are and what might happen if you fall. Just imagine being hopelessly stuck on one.