Sundance Review: FROZEN

When Adam Green hit with HATCHET in 2006, everyone, whether they liked the film or loathed it, were wondering what he would hit us with next.  The answer to that is FROZEN, a thriller that’s a little bit horrific, a little bit suspenseful, and a whole lot of successful film making.

The three leads, Emma Bell, Kevin Zegers, and Shawn Ashmore, portray a group of friends, out for a grand time at a local ski resort.  Through a series of events of which I won’t even bother to go through here, they find themselves trapped high off the ground in a stopped chairlift.  With days ahead of them before anyone even returns to the resort, the friends find themselves facing the elements, dehydration, and the bloodthirsty wolves who are kind enough to keep them company.  Decisions must be made.

When I first heard about FROZEN, I was worried that it was going to be 90 minutes of three 20-somethings sitting in a chair playing the blame game.  Not so.  There are moments of that, all the better to build the characters, but what could have been a boring view of a stuck chairlift quickly turns into quite a thrilling film.  Just as the characters are not content to sit there, the film moves with scenes of pure intensity and graphic horror.  There are moments in this film that will garner gasps and shock from the crowd, an element that might make viewing it in the theaters more susceptible to your enjoyment.

It is safe to say Green has grown as a film maker since the days of HATCHET, one of the key areas in this growth being in the development in his characters.  Long before the chairlift gets stuck, we knows these characters very well.  Bell’s Parker and Zegers’ Dan have been dating for only about a year, but Ashmore’s Lynch, Dan’s best friend, already feels his friend slipping away to Parker.  The dialog setting this up is never clunky and only feels slightly expository.  Much of it seems like real conversations characters such as this would have when trying to coerce their way into a cheaper ticket to the ski slopes.  All of this is shot with an equal amount of maturity on Green’s part.  The camera moves around the chair lift, underneath, and even over it.  It would have been so easy to film this film using only closeups on the actors’ faces, but Green is not satisfied with that.

The dialog doesn’t grow any more expository or unnecessary when they are trapped.  They carry on conversations like “What’s the worst way to die” and “Top 5” to pass their time, and much of it serves to a greater purpose.  When Bell’s character reflects on 9/11 and what horrors would cause someone to leap from the World Trade Center to their certain death, you know it is foreshadowing, but it is nuanced in a way that never feels forced or shoehorned in.

Green has come a long way in the sound utilized in his films, as well, and this aspect becomes one of the best elements of FROZEN.  In the opening scenes, we see the gears grinding of ski lift, hear the creaking and twittering of the cables pulling the giant cars up the mountain.  There is definitely a sense of foreboding early on in the film, and it reminds you more than a few times of FINAL DESTINATION.  Later in the film, there are moments where we only hear, don’t see, some of the horrors that befall one particular character.  The images that play in our mind are far more disturbing than anything special effects companies can piece together.

Another film FROZEN reminds us of, and this one is a bit more obvious, is OPEN WATERS.  Green realizes this, though, and direct references to that film come into play.  Unfortunately, much like that film, the real standout on the negative side is in the setup of the lead characters being in their horrific situation.  The series of events are so unlikely, it almost appears as if the planets are in alignment and there is some kind of force working against them.  Of course, since this kind of situation, to my knowledge, has never occurred in the real life, that alone may serve as a testament to just how unlikely this series of events occurring really is.

I’m not sure if I would go so far to classify FROZEN as a horror film, but it is definitely filled with all the stylized intensity and horrific imagery that makes any, good film of the genre memorable.  Adam Green has matured as a film director.  It is going to be interesting to see where his maturity takes him next.  Genuine characters portrayed by talented actors serves a film that is fully loaded with all the required trimmings for a feast for the senses.  FROZEN will leave you anything but cold.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars