Frozen

Year: 2010
Director: Adam Green
Cast: Shawn Ashmore, Kevin Zegers, Emma Bell


Frozen is a horror thriller that asks a question: what would you do if you're stuck on a chairlift high up in the air with nowhere to go?

Joe, Dan and Parker are three friends who go skiing together at Mount Holliston. Everything goes well until they decide to take one last trip up the mountain as the chairlift operator prepares to call it a night. After some haggling, the trio manage to convince the guy to let them go up.

And that's when things go horribly wrong.

Thanks to some miscommunication amongst the operators, they shut down the chairlift while the trio are still on it. The three kids, initially thinking that the lift malfunctioned, only realize their predicament when the lights are turned off. And since the place is only opened on weekends, they are now stuck there for the next five days, in the cold, high above the ground and nowhere to go.

And the usual reactions come forth. Panic. Bickering. Bravado without thinking things through. It leads to very bad things, and unfortunately for these three kids, that's not the worst of it. There are wolves below.

Director Adam Green also wrote the script, and he does a splendid job in depicting a situation which is quite plausible in the real world. Some of you may think that there are plenty of ways to get out of a situation like this, but to his credit, Green makes it believable that there are very few things to think of doing when you're trapped, and how fear plays a huge part in making your next most likely ill-fated move. Green also writes great dialogue for the three kids to throw at one another throughout the film, thereby making it feel as if they have really known each other a long time. Besides, it only makes sense that character development has to occur in between the mishaps, so Green had to provide the audience with something, and he does.

I remember seeing Shawn Ashmore in The Ruins, a film quite similar to this, and I felt that he performs better here. His character Joe is the sensible one, and he successfully grounds the story. This is well contrasted by Kevin Zegers as Dan, who is a bit more assertive. Emma Bell, who plays Dan's girlfriend Parker, is decent enough in her role. Her acting is slightly inconsistent and she doesn't cry very convincingly, but redeems herself towards the end.

There are a couple of flaws here and there, like the overused plot of stupid kids always getting themselves in a fix the same way every time, and some of the character developments mentioned earlier carrying on a bit longer than it ought to, but overall I liked this film. The tense moments of this movie are certainly the best parts, and quite memorable too. It says a lot when some of the audience who saw Frozen at the Sundance Film Festival reportedly threw up, fainted or left the theater in fear.

Go see this, there's a good chance you'll be scared even if you don't ski. (4/5)