Simple set up for this one. Three Students go on a skiing trip somewhere in New England and get stuck on a ski lift after the park closes down and are left to freeze to death. The scenario is brought about through mis-communication between the Ski lift operators, where the guy that let the students on for one last run gets called away from his post, he lets the guy that takes over know that there are still 3 people to come down and to wait for them before he shuts the lift down. The catch is, he was bribed with cash to let the students on this late for their last run, and if he had said there are still 3 people on their way up, things may have been ok for them, but the operator could have got into trouble, but we wouldn’t of had a movie called Frozen, maybe a short called “The Ski Lift and the weak willed operator”. So the relief operator see’s 3 skiers/boarders, pull up at the bottom of the mountain and assumes they are the last 3, and shuts the lift down.We are told earlier that the resort is only open for 3 days in the week on the weekends, and this all happens on Sunday night, so nobody will be back for 4 days.
I’m not really a fan of “people suffering for fun” movies, but occasionally one comes along that approaches this kind of thing from a more suspenseful angle, having a couple of unique elements that make the situation our characters are in more engaging due to the realism of the circumstances. Something like this could quite easily happen to anyone, although some might argue that the chain of events that occurred to cause their getting stuck are a little dumb in terms of actual possibility. But hey, anything’s possible right?
The acting is top notch, all three performances from the leads were very good. Shawn Ashmore (Iceman in the X-men movies), Kevin Zegers (apparently cast to play Clyde Barrow in the Bonnie and Clyde remake, according to imdb) I don’t know what I think of that actually, he seems like too much of a light voiced pretty boy and lacks that Warren Beatty sly ruggishness. But I could be proved totally wrong there. And Emma Bell, from The Walking Dead TV series. They had good chemistry and played off each other with some pretty cool snappy dialogue. Which brings me to another of the movies great strengths, the script is good, and with all the time the 3 students have to pass, small talk, contemplate their fate, panic, reminisce the past or whatever, they always had something interesting to talk about. And by interesting I don’t mean interesting facts and throwaway statements that aren’t related to the movie.
They talk about themselves; they ask each other ‘what if’ type questions. I just loved this about the movie, I was feeling the bleakness of their situation, and also feeling the relief of their small talk and how it helped them temporarily cope with their predicament, and I was learning more about the 3 characters and what type of people they are. The characters all turned out to be likable decent people. With this type of movie there is usually the sacrificial idiot who gets it first, Frozen didn’t need this kind of conflict, the conflict came from coping with the situation and trying to figure out how they were going to deal with it.
Like most people that watch this movie (I guess), I sat their trying to figure out what the hell I would do. I mean the odds were against them, they were high up, they had very little light, their bodies were freezing and not functioning as they should, there is a deadly threat on the ground directly below them, and if nobody does anything or even tries something, they are guaranteed to be stuck there for 4 days facing certain death.
I really want to keep this review spoiler free as the movie is worth watching, it’s a quick 90 minuter, and the suspense is awesome. I like to think I got creative with my own means of escape, but the film plays out most of the obvious possibilities, usually to no avail. The situation is harrowing, the setting is bleak and I was gripped for the duration, there are a couple of gory moments but the meat of this is pretty much left to your imagination.
I will mention that the first point of call, jumping off, is addressed early on in the ordeal, and it doesn’t work out too well, but shots from above suggested there were a lot of trees around. I had this idea of using the trees to break your fall. Thinking about it now, it still seems to make sense. If you are 60 feet up in the air, and you jump and directly hit the ground, you are going to cause some damage. But if you jump from this height towards a tree really low, once you hit it, or (hopefully) grab it, you have slowed yourself down and will fall from less of a height, I can’t help but think when you are facing certain death by freezing, and jumping is too high, I’d for sure consider the trees as some sort of cushion.
But getting down from the lift wasn’t the only challenge the students had to face, they also had to consider how to survive what was waiting for them below, it wasn’t just snow and mountains. (And no, it’s not zombies).
(Kind of a spoiler, but not really) It was obvious the 3 of them weren’t just going to sit there and freeze to death, it would have made for a pretty boring film after the build up, and the students had to do something. The resolution, if you could call it that, does make me wish the film makers had thought more about the reasons for them not trying to do what they did in the first place, as it seemed a little obvious, so obvious I didn’t really think of it during my creative thinking session earlier in the film. One method of escape was a bit of a cop out I thought, as the reasons for not trying it earlier were addressed in the movie, but one of our characters toughens up and takes the pain resulting in a pretty easy ascent, but I will tell you all 3 characters take a different method down to the ground.
I really feel this movie could have been beefed up to 1hour45, or even 2hours. They had a really good thing going, and had the script been slightly more detailed about why they couldn’t try certain ways to get down, by spending more time watching them try, whilst the audience sits there squeezing their chair arms, there would have been more questions answered and a more forgivable outcome, in my opinion.
Saying that though, the film is what I assume it was intended to be, and it’s a pretty good one, it certainly gripped me for the duration. But I would recommend this as a renter, because once you know what happens and have felt the tension of the unknown outcome, it’s the films strongest point by far, and is probably impossible to recreate once you’ve seen it.
The writer/director is Adam Green, he hasn’t made anything I recognize, a lot of short films according to imdb. But what is also interesting, he has written a script for a film called “Killer Pizza” with a 2013 date, on imdb. I wonder if it’s about Pizzas that morph into some kind of creature, or a pizza place that spices their toppings up with some kind of venom, it’d sure be an effective way to kill a lot of people, over the course of one night at least. Only time will tell.
