Frozen

I just got home from seeing Adam Green's film Frozen, which opened in wide release today. The premise of this film is simple. Dan, his girlfriend Parker, and his best friend Lynch end up stranded, for reasons I won't go into here, on a ski-lift.

Green uses the first twenty minutes or so of the film to build tension, there are a lot of lingering shots of the creaky old ski-lift machinery. He also goes to great lengths to make it clear to the audience that the characters do not have their cellphones with them. This part of the film moves a bit slowly, but is necessary, and the dialogue and character introductions are much better than they could have been.

Once the sun goes down and the ski-lift stops, things get very bad for these characters, very quickly. The brutality and intensity from this point on is relentless. All three of these actors (Shawn Ashmore, Kevin Zegers and Emma Bell) deliver outstanding performances. It's impossible not to feel compassion for them as they endure one savage cruelty after another.

Anyone who has ever sat through a horror movie with me before knows that I squirm in my seat like a greased pig when I get uncomfortable with what's happening on the screen. Well, I did a lot of squirming tonight. I'm looking forward to seeing this one again, and am very curious to check out Green's cult hit Hatchet.

I wouldn't recommend this film to everyone...but if you're not a giant baby (and you know if you are), and you can handle having your guts roll around in your body for 90 minutes, then you should head over to the multi-plex and check this out.

3 / 5 on the Awesome Meter