Frozen (I) (2010)

Three skiers are stranded on a chairlift and forced to make life-or-death choices that prove more perilous than staying put and freezing to death

Director:

Adam Green

Writer:

Adam Green

Stars:

Emma Bell, Shawn Ashmore, Kevin Zegers

1 nomination.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Emma Bell	...	Parker O'Neil
Shawn Ashmore	...	Joe Lynch
Kevin Zegers	...	Dan Walker
Ed Ackerman	...	Jason
Rileah Vanderbilt	...	Shannon
Kane Hodder	...	Cody
Adam Johnson	...	Rifkin
Chris York	...	Ryan
Peder Melhuse	...	Driver

Storyline

At Mount Holliston, snowboarders Dan Walker, his girlfriend Parker O'Neil and his best friend Joe Lynch 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 stranded 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.

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Plot Keywords:

chairlift | death | best friend | ski resort | mountain | 

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Taglines:

No one knows you're up there

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Genres:

Drama | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for some disturbing images and language

Details

Official Sites:

Official site Official site [jp]

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

25 March 2010 (Kazakhstan)

Also Known As:

Bajo cero

Filming Locations:

Snowbasin, Utah, USA

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$131,395 (USA) (5 February 2010)

Gross:

$246,177 (USA) (26 March 2010)

Company Credits

Production Co:

A Bigger Boat, ArieScope Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

93 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Twisted Sister's Dee Snider is the voice from the top of the mountain who announces "Last chair is through." Dee's son Cody was the director's assistant on the picture and cameos in the lodge wearing a Twisted Sister T-shirt.

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Goofs

The snowstorm during the first night on the lift is depicted as being heavy enough to bury the equipment the protagonists threw down to the ground, but subsequent establishing shots of the ski resort show the mountain covered in tracks in the snow left behind by skiers and boarders previously.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Joe Lynch: I don't see her.
Dan Walker: The shift changes. Just give it a couple of minutes.
Parker O'Neil: Are you sure about this?
Dan Walker: Yeah yeah, works all the time. Besides, this lady loves Lynch. Loves him.

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Connections

Referenced in Hatchet II (2010)

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Soundtracks

"Green Arrow"
Written by Eric Waxwood and Larry Mansdorf
Performed by Auto Interiors
Courtesy of Rykodisc

User Reviews

Fascinating... a very hard trick to pull off with no human adversary!

The magic of Frozen is that there's no badguy. It's just humans against nature. I was worried at first that the film would be slow paced. I mean, how many things can happen within such a small space?

It turns out: plenty. Although time passes during the movie, the film does not give in to drawn out melodramatic sequences. They fight against nature, but the film is structured to attack them from all sides at once, but also in a way that's not transparently unrealistic. (Although personally I feel that nobody would have survived the cold and dehydration of the first night.)

We even learn a little about the characters, in a way that's more convincing than most disaster films, I am thinking for example of The Poseidon Adventure. There are no stereotypes here.

And they make mistakes. This isn't like Die Hard where the protagonist cleverly thinks of everything. Everything about the film, including their being trapped up so high, falls together like a series of coincidences, and that makes it even more horrific, because you start to believe that it might actually happen. There's even a little comedy to offset the horror, towards the beginning.

There is some gore in the film, but hugely less than I was led to believe. This is no Quentin Tarantino film and no slasher film either.

So having said what it's not, what is it? It's a thrilling look at how, even though we humans have extended ourselves into nature with technology, how reliant we are on that technology. It's an intellectual thriller rather than a supernatural or a serial killer freakshow thriller. It's normal people without heroic powers stuck in a situation that is near to real, the "Lost in Translation" of horror films.

I though it was fantastic. I'll give Frozen a 9 out of 10.