REVIEW: FROZEN (2010)

Frozen (2010)

Starring: Shawn Ashmore, Emma Bell, Kevin Zegers

Director: Adam Green

I am in the final push to finish up as many 2010 films before Pac and I release our list of awardees for this year. On my list to watch was a little known film released in the beginning of the year called Frozen. Released under the category of horror, it was far from it, and fell solidly under suspense….or comedy.

Frozen stars a trio of people that you make you go, “I know that guy from somewhere!” Most notable were Shawn Ashmore (X-Men, X-Men: United, X-Men: The Last Stand) and Emma Bell (The Walking Dead). Don’t know them by name? I didn’t either until I just looked them up. Three friends decide to take a day trip to a ski resort before it closes for the week and during a final run, the lift gets shut down with them stuck on it, sitting helplessly above the ground, left alone on the mountain. The friends must make difficult choices to survive the cold and other menacing forces before they slowly die on the mountain.

As in most horror movies, the main characters are just plain dumb. But, on top of that, the filmmakers made  decisions to make them appear dumber than necessary. Even though they are freezing to death, they are unconvincingly cold. Only one of them puts the hood up on their jacket and some even leave their hands out in the cold and that was a difficult point to avoid. I could suspend disbelief of them not trying to cover their mouths for the sake of being able to hear what they are saying, but not putting their hoods up just made no sense.

Man, I am so cold...I wish there was something more I could do to keep warm.

I did like the fact that even though the characters weren’t the brightest, the writers did take time to develop them a bit, which is rare in most horror films. I was actually pleasantly surprised with the script. With the modest budget that they worked with, they also managed to do a pretty effective job of portraying the cold (even if the actors couldn’t really portray it) and harsh environment that they were in.

That being said, I bring up another plot point that they used to advance the story that makes no sense….ravenous wolves. If they were in the wilderness, not at a ski resort, this would have been acceptable, but these things are all over the place in a highly populated environment. At first I thought that the wolves would only come out at night, but they are there during the day too. What was to stop them from attacking helpless skiers when the resort was actually open and operational? Why was it only when it closed that these wolves bothered people and felt compelled to tear the  sinews from their bones?

People...it's what's for dinner.

The acting was sub par, even for this caliber of film, and I think that it would have made a huge difference in building suspense if the leads could actually bring the depth to the characters that was present in the script. I did manage to stay engaged in the film, it was never particularly boring, but like in The Walking Dead, the stupidity was really hard to ignore, and the primary tension in the film, how cold they were, was ruined by the poor performances.

• Characters: B
• Cinematography: B
• Directing: B-
• Plot: C+
• Performances: C-
• OVERALL: C+