From The Corner: Frozen (2010)

I'm not going to lie- this movie SOUNDED good and interesting, and I was intrigued to see how someone would handle a story with such a limited number of cast and locations.

Joe, Dan and Dan's girlfriend, Parker are skiing and decided to bribe the chair lift operator to allow them one last run- despite warnings of a severe storm heading in. Due to a bad timing and miscommunication, the three wind up stranded on the chair lift halfwayup the mountain. The trio soon learn that freezing isn't the only way to die in the cold night air...

This film is notable for reports of people fainting while viewing it at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and for being the opening movie of the Glasgow Frightfest.

This movie had potential, but was hampered by clunky dialouge, a lackluster cast, and stiff acting that wasn't the result of the cold. This is a dialogue heavy movie... and not very interesting dialogue. When they're not whining, they're crying, and when they're not crying, they're screaming. The dialogue doesn't really help you care about the characters, since they weren't very likable at the beginning. Dan was "The Rich Douche", Joe was the "Mooch Douche", and Parker was, "That Girl"... and of the three, Joe was the most likable.

I will give Dan and Joe credit however for showing SOME redeeming qualities when they step up and do what needs to be done in order to try and get rescue while Parker just shivered and cried. Ultimately though, I felt little sympathy for characters whose sense of "entitlement" and arrogance helped get them into such a dire situation to begin with.

The cast wasn't what I could classify as steller- and their less than natural performance probably helped to contribute to my inability to like the characters. Shawn Ashmore- you plays Joe, did a decent job compared to Kevin Zeger (Dan), and Emily Bell (Parker), but it wasn't enough to pull me into hoping he survives. I will however say, that these three were great at crying and shivering.

It's hard for me to feel tension and suspense in a movie like this when I can pretty much predict what's happening. Introduce two best friends and a girlfriend taking part in a "man's weekend"- I could see the emotional "conflict" coming and tally up a kill. Introduce a cute girl for one of the friends to chat up- I could tally up one more kill. Introduce a fat ski lift operator who wants to go home- yep, I knew what would happen. Before they even got onto the ski lift, I could tell who would die. The rest was just watching Fate unrolling for the three characters.

There are some positives to this movie however, and I HAVE to admit that it has to be tough to do a suspenseful movie with three people and a chair lift. One of the positives was parts of the camera work. The scenic shots were beautiful and helped to accent the isolation the characters were experiencing. Also, the gore- what little gore there is, was actually done pretty well.

In the final analysis, I have to give Adam Green credit for trying to create something interesting with such limited and flawed resources. Unfortunately, that effort just wasn't enough to pull into the movie on an emotional level. For a thriller, I just didn't find "Frozen" all that thrilling... and I'd have to rate this movie as part of "The Ugly"

Follow Mike S @TerrorCorner