Monday 11 October 2010

Frozen

The premise of Frozen - the latest film from Adam Green, who made the stupid but fun swamp-based monster movie Hatchet - will be familiar to anyone who's seen the opening episode of the third series of Bottom, in which Richie and Eddie are trapped on a ferris wheel slated for imminent demolition. In Frozen, however, we have three students trapped on a ski lift. With no hope of  rescue until the following weekend, by which time they will surely have perished from exposure, one of them needs to find a way to escape the predicament and alert the authorities. But how?

As so often with such a simple set-up, more fun is to be had from finding out how they get into this situation than their subsequent adventures. Probably this is simply because the single location becomes monotonous while both the avenues open to the characters and the potential pitfalls are limited, leading to repetition and a loss of tension. I would have liked to see what was going on back home as they failed to return to their homes and colleges, if only for a change of scenery and characters. After all, they aren't so dislikable that you'd expect their friends and relatives to be simply relieved by their dissapearance (unlike those of the leads in Hostel, say).

Frozen has some nice watch-through-fingers parts arising largely from the effects of the cold on human skin, though it lacks any detailed gore (hence receiving a 15 certificate). It's well-made, convincing and probably as good as a film set mostly on a ski lift could hope to be. But I don't think any such film could expect to become a classic. Currently available free online for lovefilm members despite its recent cinema release, it's certainly worth a watch at that price, but otherwise is probably not worth prioritising unless you find the prospect of being stuck on a ski lift inherently fascinating.

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