Frozen (2010)

Frozen

IMDB rate: 6,2
Genre: Survival
Starring: Shawn Ashmore, Emma Bell, Kevin Zegers

No people, this is no review of Disney's Frozen (which I didn't like at all by the way), this review is about Frozen, the horror version. Someone mentioned this movie to me some years ago, and ever since I wanted to watch it. I actually thought this movie wouldn't be very good, that it would be slow paced and that it just wouldn't be very interesting to watch three people being stuck in a ski lift. Luckily, I was wrong. I was even surprised how fast time was flying when watching this movie.

At Mount Holliston, snowboarders Dan Walker (Kevin Zegers), his girlfriend Parker O'Neil (Emma Bell) and his best fried Joe Lynch (Shawn Ashmore) don't have enough money to buy lift tickets. Parker bribes Jason, a lift-worker, with one hundred dollars. When the system is nearing closure, they force Jason to let them have one last pass. However, Jason needs to resolve a problem and his colleague misunderstands his instructions and stops the lift. The trio of skier and snowboarders gets strander on the chairlift near the top of the mountain. When they see that the lights of the ski resort had been turned off, they need to make a choice: leave the chairlift or freeze to death.

As I already said, I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. The beauty of this movie is that there is no real bad guy that's causing all there misfortune, it's purely them versus nature. Nature is this case proves to be a real toughie with his snow storms, freezing cold and his creatures named wolves.

The location of the movie is magnificent, it's even better when you learn that there's no green screen involved and that everything was actually filmed on location. The actors were truly 50 feet in the air on a real mountain. They even found a ski lift which they obviously used to film in. I even read that the official camera guys were too afraid to film from one of the chairs on the ski lift while it was moving, so director Adam Green had to film those scenes.

I was afraid that the movie would become boring after awhile, I mean can things be on a space that small? The movie Buried was even smaller and that one become very boring after awhile. Frozen doesn't become boring though, even when they haven't been stuck for incredibly long they immediately decide to take action. The fact that this turns out wrong kinda sucks, but their intention was good. Spoiler ahead --> I thought it was a pretty cool scene where Dan was stuck on the ground because of this broken legs and when Lynch tried to get to the other side but returned because he saw wolves roaming around Dan. The moment between Parker and Lynch to protect her from seeing him getting killed was very beautiful /end of spoiler.

The acting is quite good in Frozen. I already saw Shawn Ashmore in plenty of movies and he never bores me. It was Emma Bell's first movie and I thought she did a great job. Her acting in the scene where she was worried about her puppy felt real, it actually almost made me tear-up. I'm not a huge fan of Kevin Zegers, but he did a fine job I think.

Frozen was an impressive survival movie, with a beautiful but deadly location. It was filled with terror and horror, even though not the horror you might suspect from a horror movie. This movie felt real, and even more so because of it's ending. Great, surprising movie.

My rate: 7,5/10