LYT review: Frozen

Adam Green has a pretty good reputation in the horror community. He’s well-liked, and people have a tendency to rave up his movies, generally – first HATCHET, and now FROZEN. I’ve never met the guy, but I assume he’s a cool, easy to get along with dude. Because frankly, his movies don’t suck, but I have yet to be convinced they’re particularly special, relative to the hype they get. HATCHET: yeah, cool gory kills, some campy laughs, but really not much more than an entertaining diversion, and hardly what I’d call a new classic; I groaned aloud when the killer went from being a badass deformed guy to something totally unkillable.

FROZEN is more solid, no pun intended, but right off the bat, Green does something that makes it very hard for me to take things seriously – he names the two main characters after some of his famous friends. Now, maybe he figured that since this is a more dramatic thriller than straight horror, it’ll play to mainstream audiences who don’t know their low-budget horror celebrities. And yeah, WRONG TURN 2 director Joe Lynch has a pretty common name, so if that were as far as it went, I could give that a pass. But horror journalist Spooky Dan Walker doesn’t. Yes, the character is only named Dan Walker, but there’s honest-to-god a moment when his friend turns to him and goes, “That’s kinda spooky, Dan.”

There’s also a minor character named Rifkin, which may or may not be derived from actor/director Adam Rifkin, but once you’ve tripped my name-drop detector twice, you can’t blame me for making that leap. If I were to make a dead-serious horror movie, no way I’m calling my lead characters, let’s say, Lucky McKee and Rian Johnson. Unless I’m making THE LUCKY MCKEE AND RIAN JOHNSON STORY.

All right, so, having slapped him a little bit, I will now proceed with some praise: FROZEN has a great hook: three people on a ski lift that suddenly stops. Nobody else is around. Now, according to those wireless commercials I’ve seen lately, this can be an occasion for some pretty awesome web-surfing, texting, and such, but none of our three main characters – Joe Lynch (Shawn Ashmore), Dan Walker (Kevin Zegers) and the non-celebrity-named Parker O’Neil (Emma Bell) – brought their phones. Just go with it; there are still people in the world who don’t take their phones everywhere.

So they can’t have fun with that, plus the resort has closed down without acknowledging them (as in OPEN WATER, a miscount by a disinterested employee leads the operator to think everyone’s come down from the mountain). And night is coming, and the temperature is dropping. Plus the mountain is closed for the next seven days.

Well, there are only so many things you can do, and that’s the inherent limitation of the premise. You can wait for help, you can try to jump down, or you can try to climb up on the wire; that’s pretty much it. So between those options, there needs to be a fair bit of talking to kill time, from the banal (character memories of first grade) to the goofy (jokes about the Sarlacc pit from RETURN OF THE JEDI). To amp things up, some wolves eventually arrive; I have to admit, I have a hard time finding regular wolves all that scary in moves. Giant werewolves, yes, but regular wolves, while they might be intimidating were you to encounter one, don’t come across as super-scary on film. Bears, yes. But that stupid Hugh Grant movie that just came out probably ruined bears in movies for a while.

Green really picks up the pace for a strong finish, though. I won’t spoil anything; just say that he does a masterful job of creating tension in what must have been a very tricky shooting situation (the whole thing was shot on a real ski-lift, not some studio set). Yes, there’s an element of procrastination to the story, but when it does get around to the action, it delivers.

And that really is more important than what he chooses to name his characters, but dammit, when you know Spooky Dan Walker, it makes it a bit difficult to accept his name on this obnoxious skier boy. In addition, I should probably comment on the fact that Shawn Ashmore played Iceman in the X-MEN movies, so it’s ironic that he’s the star of FROZEN, in a way. I only note this because everyone is thinking it, so let’s put it out there.

Will Adam Green make a great, iconic movie eventually? In time, perhaps. I don’t think we do him any favors to claim he already has...but I will say that FROZEN is a step in the right direction.