I am a lazy bugger. I live at the top of a hill and the station is about 100 yards away at the top of another fairly small protuberance. It's not far at all but, when I'm staggering back from London in the small wee hours with umpteen pints of Old Mysterious under my belt and a randy kebab needing my attention, that little climb seems like a huge amount of effort. I've always contemplated putting a planning application in for a chair lift across the "valley" - or at the very least a death-slide. However, Frozen has gone some way to putting me off my cunning scheme.
Chairlifts are shonky things at the best of times. Being suspended hundreds of feet above the ground on an exposed and flimsy contraption of metal poles held aloft by what might well be seven strands of rotten string isn't my idea of the best way to spend an extended amount of time. Add to this the wonderful gift of vertigo I suffer from and I have extreme sympathy for the protagonists of Frozen.
Director Adam Green has proved more than able to craft fast paced comedy horror with Hatchet as well as a more slow burning psychological terror in Spiral. Here, Green strips the genre down to core elements - Three main characters, one location and an encroaching sense of helpless dread. Our three heroes are snowboarders, cheekily wrangling one last ride up the chairlift for a bit of after-hours piste action. Unluckily for them, a misunderstanding between the resort staff leaves the three dangling in mid air, trapped in the seats as the lights go off and a frozen storm makes its way across the mountains. With the resort shut until the following weekend the situation calls for desperate measures, but little do they know that worse threats await them on the ground...
Green is really sticking his neck out here. Taking a cast of relatively unknown actors and placing them in a situation which forces the cast to be largely static is a potential recipe for disaster. It's lucky for everyone that Green is a talented enough writer and director to capitalise on the horrific potential of the situation and create what is the best film of his career so far.
Firstly, the three characters in this film are all likeable, ordinary kids that could so easily have ended up as hateful college jock stereotypes. The friendships between the two guys and one girl are beautifully observed and it doesn't take long for you to start placing yourself in their shoes, wondering if you'd take the same risks, make the same sacrifices or mistakes. There's a fantastic scene where an emotional Parker (Emma Bell) pours out her frustrations and terror of dying in the situation, and revealing the guilt she feels at the ramifications it will have on those she cares for. It places the characters in a much broader setting, making you realise they're people with lives that exist outside of the ski-lift, with feelings, morals and responsibilities. Without being emotionally manipulative, the film invites you to care about these characters and gives you good reason to do so. It makes what happens to them all the more nerve-wracking and painful to watch.
And painful it is at times. Without giving too much away, this isn't an easily resolved situation, and making their way to the ground is a protracted, painful and sometimes bloody experience. While the film never dwells on protracted sequences of gore, there are enough painful moments that are amplified wonderfully by some excellent sound design. For a start, the sense of isolation is superb as the wind whistles around the chairlift, while the thin metal wire holding them up creaks and rattles. Soon, other more worrying sounds join in. Cracking and crunching bones. Screams of pain. And then sounds that indicate they're not as alone as they thought they were. Very dangerous sounds. There's an enormously powerful sequence where something goes astonishingly wrong for one of the characters and the other two are stuck, forced to listen to the terrible sounds of what's going on. We see their horrified faces as the sounds go on and on in a painful sequence that's a hundred times more effective than if we'd seen graphic, gore-splattered, sequences of the character's fate. Despite the excess of Hatchet, Green's clearly aware that the mind is a powerful tool in creating true fear.
All three main cast members give superb performances, with a special mention going to Emma Bell for shouldering many of the most emotional weight so effectively. Kane Hodder fans will be pleased to hear he adds his considerable presence to the movie in a brief but pivotal cameo which all but seals our heroes' fate.
I'm seriously impressed with Frozen. Sure, there are maybe a few too many signposted "it's all going to go wrong" moments early in the film, including flyers for missing people and a poster that all but yells "you will die!" but these are minor points. This is a superb horror film, and certainly one that deserves a wide audience. There's just the right balance of slowly increasing tension and desperate panic that makes this an edge of the seat crowd pleaser that should satisfy even non horror loving cinema goers. By keeping most of the gore implied, as Spielberg did with Jaws, Green has opened up his potential audience without having to cut down on the horrific events. Despite having watched it in a sweltering screening room on one of the hottest days of the year, the movie pulls you into its chilly embrace and leaves you sitting as tense and rigid as an ice statue until the credits finally roll and you can breathe again.
Highly recommended
Review by Paul Bird
| Directed by Adam Green |