Very Decent Frozen

The trailer gives away too much but Adam Green‘s Frozen (Anchor Bay, 2.5), which I decided to see yesterday afternoon, is a realistic, relatively decent kids-in-a-bad-situation terror-drama. I respected Green’s efforts to keep it all believable. He actually spends about a half hour exploring his 20-something characters (played by Emma Bell, Shawn Ashmore, Kevin Zegers) before the bad stuff happens. That’s unusual.

By bad stuff I mean “chairlift cable stops, the lights go off and they have to do something to avoid freezing to death.” (All in the trailer.) Nothing earth-shaking, mind, but Green has clearly struggled with every last detail in order to eliminate credibility bumps. The wolves look a wee bit fake but otherwise it’s really not too bad. Don’t listen to those IMDB posters who are trashing it. It’s not the Eric Von Stroheim‘s Greed but it’s a very servicable thriller along these lines.

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30 thoughts on “Very Decent Frozen”

  1. I *hated* HATCHET so I’m at least pleased that Green has decided to do something somewhat serious and not go for the easy, juvenile gross-out route again.

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  3. Just a note for D.Z watchers: he officially committed the EPIC FAIL of box office predictions as of the close of business yesterday: AVATAR is now the top grossing movie of all time.

    I think this fact alone should warrant a banning of several months…

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  4. “He actually spends about a half hour exploring his 20-something characters (played by Emma Bell, Shawn Ashmore, Kevin Zegers) before the bad stuff happens. ”

    This is pretty standard, no? Wolf Creek spent time with it’s characters. I’m sure there are other recent examples.

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  5. Any good thriller/horror film gives at least an act (25-30 min) to develop characters before the crap goes down. Even pure genre pictures like Taken or Legion gives you 25-30 minutes of character development and narrative establishment before the plot kicks into gear.

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  6. Reminds me of the “Curb your Enthusiasm’ episode where Larry was stuck with a Modern Orthodox girl on a ski-lift with Shabbat fast approaching. The girl jumped more to get away from Larry than for religious purposes.

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  8. If you don’t spend time developing the characters, then nobody cares what happens to the characters, and then it’s just a stunt that evaporates from your mind a day or two after seeing it.

    Having said that…at first blush, I don’t have a lot of confidence that I’m going to care much about the fate of these three blandly attractive actors.

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  9. Would the fall kill them? If not, jump and get the fuck out of there.

    Although being mauled by wolves apparently waits for them. This looks really dumb

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  10. This looks real goofy. No fall from a lift is deadly. Jump down, tuck, break a leg or two and pull yourself down the hill Daniel-Day Lewis style. Wolves arent like sharks either. Retarded.

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  11. In the old-fashioned world of screenwriting, that 20-30 minutes is called “Act One.” It’s often dispensed with these days as “boring character stuff” before you get to the CGI… sigh.

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  12. I’m curious to know why Jeff chose to see what appears to be a serviceable thriller with distribution and a release date of a week-and-a-half away while at Sundance.

    And the trailer gives more than too much away. One guy apparently falls, breaking his legs to be eaten by wolves. The other tries climbing the cables, apparently to meet a similar fate. So it’s down to the girl, frozen-handed in the last minutes of the movie, one would guess. All that’s left is the MIST-ish ending that shows the lift starting up again as she watches from below, being devoured by wolves.

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  14. bmcintire asks a very pertinent question, but giving Jeff the benefit of the doubt we can assume that he had a slot between more promising films and FROZEN was pretty much all there was. I can relate.

    My wife came home Friday to find me watching KILL BILL, VOL 1 while I was working on dinner. No, it’s not a favorite film and has been both Encore and TNT like every day for the last couple of months for some odd reason. However, it was either that or watch the Haiti thing on almost every other channel.

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  15. “Any good thriller/horror film gives at least an act (25-30 min) to develop characters before the crap goes down.”

    I think Hitchcock (among others) would disagree with you, as far as thrillers go. (Horror, sure, that’s usually a good rule.) There are plenty of good thrillers where you get to know the characters while crap is starting to go down; it’s economic writing, if you can pull it off.

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  16. Reminds me of the “Curb your Enthusiasm’ episode where Larry was stuck with a Modern Orthodox girl on a ski-lift with Shabbat fast approaching. The girl jumped more to get away from Larry than for religious purposes.

    lol

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  17. Opening opposite DEAR JOHN (Seyfried Power), which will get my money first and have me welling up like a little girl. AND that movie where Travolta looks like Morris from 24 and Jon Rhys Myers has a stache for no reason, which will get my money 2nd.

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  18. “Very Decent”? Wouldn’t “Very Good Frozen” be better? Yes, but then it would sound like an arty film blogger loved a scary genre movie, and we can’t have THAT, unless the movie was made in the 70s. Seriously, everything about this post feels like a subconscious apology for really liking a genre movie.

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  19. Why don’t they just wait until morning, then the one guy hangs from the lift, the other guy hangs from him, and then the girl climbs down them and jumps (which can’t be much of a jump by then) and goes and either turns the lift back on or gets help? Also I’m pretty sure a ski resort would make sure there were no wolves, even when they were closed.

    If I had to guess, the true villain is the fat guy who turned off the lift on purpose in an attempt to harm the beautiful leads. Probably why Wells liked it so much.

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