Frozen (2010)
Directed by Adam Green
When three skiers find themselves stranded on a chair lift at a New England ski resort that has closed for the next week, they are forced to make life or death choices that prove to be more perilous than staying put and freezing to death.
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What critics say influenced Frozen
The buzz: This horror flick, which likely wants to do for skiing what “Jaws” did for swimming, even includes a conversation about “Jaws” in case the audience doesn't pick up on that.
One of the producing partners of "Frozen" is A Bigger Boat Productions, a clear reference to 1975's "Jaws."
Advertisement Before absolute fear sets in and tough decisions have to be made, the trio chat and spar about smoking, the film "Jaws," as well as the worst ways to die.
While the posters and ad campaign touted this as the new “Jaws,” Green really does hearken back to the likes of films like “Gerry” where seemingly insignificant circumstances instantly turn harrowing thanks to mother nature and incidents that turn small obstacles in to mountains.
It will do for skiing what Jaws did for swimming.
Everybody talks around the obvious interpersonal ugliness between them, and they drift, as callow young adults will, into conversations about pop culture: one lengthy dialogue about sharks explicitly sets up a Jaws reference, but it's also a winking reference to Open Water , the Ur-text of this particular subgenre.
Who knew when the efficient little suspense film “Open Water’’ came out in 2003 that its concept - two scuba divers swept out to sea, with sharks circling - would become a template for every young filmmaker with a dollar and a dream?
In that sense, the intermittently suspenseful Frozen is closer in spirit to the terrifyingly haunting 2003 film Open Water (a couple marooned in the middle of the ocean) and the far less successful stuck-in-the-middle -of-nowhere movie from last year, The Canyon (a couple marooned at the bottom of the Grand Canyon).
Some spoiled young people try to have some healthy outdoor fun — say, scuba-diving (2003's Open Water), or hiking the Grand Canyon (last year's The Canyon), or, in the case of Adam Green's nasty chiller, snowboarding — and, invariably, Mother Nature or Fate or a sadistic screenwriter turns it all into hell.
“Frozen” has more in common with “Open Water,” the masterfully tense 2003 indie in which two scuba divers are stranded in the middle of the ocean with little hope and unimaginable fear lurking beneath.
The plot is a doozy, yes?it has been described in some circles as a snow-set variation on 2004's flawed but effective " Open Water "?but the depth of character and the masterful, unsparing grasp Green and cinematographer Will Barratt have over their mise-en-scéne are the film's all-important special ingredients.
Consider "Frozen" a wind- chilled "Open Water," a 2003 indie that also premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
The acting isn't always convincing, and director-writer Adam Green, who developed a bit of a cult following for his 2006 horror film Hatchet, takes his time getting the trio in the chair.
Parents need to know that Frozen is a horror/thriller from director Adam Green , whose previous movie was the comic slasher movie Hatchet .
It’s a ballsy move for Green, who doesn’t strike me as the sincere type, previously directing the snoozer slasher/laugher picture “Hatchet” and the harebrained chiller “Spiral.”
Director Adam Green broke into the horror genre with the comic slasher film Hatchet , which was made with just the right attitude, and it's a good deal of fun.
Watching "Frozen," written and directed with an uncommonly savvy, airtight assuredness by Adam Green (2007's " Hatchet "), is akin to swimming in a giant, extra-duty washing machine for 94 minutes.
Green (director of Hatchet and the upcoming Hatchet 2) has stumbled onto a nifty variant of a genre paradigm, but just like most American horror films today, Frozen proves more gory than scary—the worst of this trio's problems isn't heights, hunger or thirst, but a bloodthirsty pack of wolves licking their lips down below.
Green, part of a small cadre of ambitious storytellers (he produced Paul Solet's creepy Grace while writing Frozen), has an excellent sense of rhythm -- keep in mind, the bulk of the movie focuses on three people sitting in a chair lift -- and a good eye for casting.
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Emma Bell (2007's " Gracie "), Shawn Ashmore (2008's " The Ruins ") and Kevin Zegers (2005's " Transamerica ") deliver terrific performances equaling the intensity that writer-director Adam Green ratchets, embodying specific individuals rather than easy types.
It's sort of like how I felt about Eli Roth's "Cabin Fever."
Emma Bell (2007's " Gracie "), Shawn Ashmore (2008's " The Ruins ") and Kevin Zegers (2005's " Transamerica ") deliver terrific performances equaling the intensity that writer-director Adam Green ratchets, embodying specific individuals rather than easy types.
Director and writer Adam Green was aiming for a low-budget thriller in the vein of Paranormal Activity.
Whereas Paranormal Activity pulsated with the dread of the supernatural, Frozen's fears are rooted in the seemingly mundane reality of nature inexorably taking its course.
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That said, Frozen isn't exactly Touching the Void, and there are more than a few plausibility issues, especially when you try to get your head around three young people going out on the slopes without one of them having a cell phone or PDA. Green barely addresses this, and there's nothing to make us assume this story takes place in the '70s or '80s or anything.
Made by real pros, and having lasting shock value, it is miles above and beyond such temporary distractions as The Blair Witch Project (an amateurish fluke it resembles in no way except a shoestring budget) in quality, artistry and appeal.