Frozen

I went into this movie never having heard of it before. I'm not really a huge fan of survival horror (or even horror in general). This film was decent enough for the genre, even if there weren't really many surprises or anything new.

Major spoilers follow. Be warned.








The movie is about three college students who are out on a weekend skiing trip. Joe (Shawn Ashmore) and his best friend Dan (Kevin Zegers) have been going skiing together for a long time. This time, they bring along Dan's girlfriend Parker (Emma Bell), to Joe's moderate annoyance. Through a series of unfortunate events, the trio get stranded on a ski-lift chair. At first they joke about it, but soon realize that they are truly stuck there and noone will be coming back to the lodge for a week. As expected, panic ensues, culminating in a (rather foolish) attempt by one of the three to get help by jumping off the chair. The resulting massive (and somewhat improbable) injuries are complicated by the arrival of a pack of wolves and... well I think you can figure it out.

The remaining two brood about it for a night or so, then try to get off the lift by using the (apparently razor sharp) cable to get to a maintenance ladder. As before, the wolves complicate matters further (darned wolves!). I won't lay out the ending but suffice to say, it's quite predictable who does or does not survive.

For a genre film, it was quite good. There were moments that were tense and cringe-worthy, even if some of the injury effects were not done very well and I swear that one body looked like a side of beef. The acting from Zegers (always the Air Bud boy to me), Ashmore (Ice-man in the X-Men films), and newcomer Bell was quite good and effective in portraying the reaction to the situation. The film runs a little short at 94 minutes but the time was well used.


Things I learned from Frozen:

1. Wolves are mean.
2. You should always carry a cellphone.
3. Ski-lift cables are really really sharp.
4. Jumping 50 feet onto a mountain is not a good idea.
5. The mounting screws on ski-lift chairs suck.
6. Ski-lift operators do not perform any checks to see if anyone is still on the lift before closing.