Frozen

Year: 2010

Director: Adam Green

Cast: Shawn Ashmore, Emma Bell, Kevin Zegers
Fright Meter Award Winner:  Best Director, Best Supporting Actor

Three college friends enjoying a weekend ski trip accidentally get stranded on the ski resort's chair lift as it is shut down early due to approaching inclement weather. This proves problematic because the resort will not be opening again until the following weekend, requiring them to make crucial decisions to ensure their survival.

Adam Green's follow up to the highly entertaining Hatchet is not as over the top as Victor Crowley's rampage, but is certainly more terrifying. Many of us have a fear of heights or enclosed, tight spaces and Green does a marvelous job at honing in on the minute details and dangers involved in the predicament that our three protagonists find themselves in. Whether it is highlighting the foreboding falling of a single snowflake or faint and muffled howl of a wolf, Green demonstrates he can build terror through subtleness just as successfully as he can shower a screen with gore. In addition to the sharp directing, Frozen also works because of the endearing and believable performances of the three leads. These are not the annoying, self-absorbed college aged kids that we usually see in these kind of films. Their relationship is believable and their interactions ring true to life. This is crucial because the viewer needs to be engaged with and care about characters who, for most of the film, are the sole characters. The fact that the three of them are so likable certainly makes their fate that much more difficult to watch.

Most of the criticism I heard prior to seeing this film for myself was related to certain situations and actions by the characters not being realistic. And while I had some "why don't they just...." thoughts of my own, the truth is nobody can say for sure how he or she would react in a similar situation. It is easy to preach from the cozy comfort of our couch, but what would we really do if we were freezing to death 50 above the ground? And let's be honest, the events of, let's say The Hangover are unrealistic and unlikely, but I don't recall hearing many people mention that. Frozen's effectiveness isn't in its realism. It's in the fact that it makes the viewer feel what the characters are feeling: the cold, the helplessness, the panic.