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The Appropriate Tune - "Frozen" by Daniel Lanois
Oftentimes the scariest things in horror movies are also the simplest. When Tim Robbins is watching the subway pass by at the beginning of Jacob’s Ladder and and we see the ghastly passengers glaring back at him, or when Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween is walking around Haddonfield and we suddenly notice Michael Myers in the background,watching her, those are often the moments which resonate most with audiences and make those films as iconic as they are.
Those are scenes though, it’s different when that mindset is applied to the premise of the films themselves. Christine is a movie about a car that kills people but because of the direction of John Carpenter it’s been elevated to a great film, but most people probably wouldn’t say the same about Rubber, the movie about a killer tire. The Birds is a movie about birds that kill people but because of the direction of Alfred Hitchcock it’s been elevated to a great film, but I doubt many people would say that about Frogs or Slugs or any of the other deluge of animal swarm horror films. Of course of all the genres of film horror is also the one that requires subtlety and depth the least, so even if they are simple on the surface you can never really count them out. So I remember years ago watching the Angry Video Game talk about a movie that seemed to be just that: bare bones and a simple premise. And instead of watching Chronicles of Riddick like I was originally planning, apologies to all you Vin Diesel fans out there, I decided to watch this one instead. Can it live up to the nonexistent hype? I dunno actually, I write these intros before I watch the film itself.
Released in 2010, Frozen (not to be confused with the Disney film, or the 3 or so other movies called Frozen) was written and directed by Adam Green and produced by Peter Block and Cory Neal through A Bigger Boat and ArieScope Pictures. Shawn Ashmore plays Joe Lynch, a young college student who has decided to take impromptu ski trip with his best friend Dan (Kevin Zegers) and, reluctantly, Dan’s girlfriend Parker (Emma Bell). It’s an eventful day of water sports, but as night falls Lynch convinces the two to take in one last ride on the powder, despite the ominous foreshadowing. During their trip up the slope however, a series of unfortunate events leads the chalet staff to shut down for the night (and the week, as it turns out), trapping them on the ski lift. As the reality of the situation sets in, tensions start to flare out of control and the three start contemplating rather drastic plans for escape. Will Parker, Lynch and Dan manage to make it off the mountain alive, or will they end up…………………………….Frozen? You’ll have to watch to find out.
Talking about simple films, you can’t get much simpler than Frozen. A handful of people for the cast, set in one mostly static location, it’s practically Waiting for Godot with some extra steps. Unlike The Birds however, which works in spite of itself thanks to the director, Frozen really works because of its simplicity. On the surface it seems quite mundane, just some people stuck on a ski lift, but it’s the reality of it that makes it terrifying. You’ve probably never been attacked by a bird before, but chances are that you’ve been on an elevator and had an errant thought of what would happen if the power went out or the cable snapped. Or ridden on a plane and wondered if the technicians were on the ball when they were making sure the thing could fly. Being stranded on a ski lift is something that could and probably has happened to people in real life, and it takes those things that we take for granted in our everyday lives, access to food, water, air conditioning, bathrooms, and magnifies them to matters of life or death. At its best it can be downright excruciating to watch, more than anything involving Michael Myers or Freddie Krueger, and that’s pretty damn impressive given how much of the film’s runtime is dedicated to seeing people sitting down.
Credit where credit is due though, because those people sitting down do a damn good job. I’m not really familiar with any of their work, although they all seem to have had recurring roles in various TV shows like The Walking Dead over the years, but I would hope that this performance helped to open some doors for them. You can wholeheartedly believe that these poor fuckers are slowly freezing to death, each scene radiating this aura of hopeless misery as they struggle against their situation. Shawn Ashmore as Joe Lynch is probably the standout, as his character is given the most material to work with, but it’s really an ensemble film. Lynch’s third wheel bitterness really works because it clashes against Parker’s fish-out-of-water helplessness, all of which is contrasted by the need to cooperate and help each other to ensure mutual survival. There’s no stupid betrayals or hidden psychopaths to throw a wrench into things, just the struggle for survival.
If my description of Frozen makes it sound like a misery porn movie, then unfortunately I’m going to have to confirm that assumption. At first it doesn’t seem so bad, these people are stuck on a ski lift not on a cruise ship after all, but as the film goes on apparently Adam Green believes that almost freezing to death isn’t enough tension and keeps upping the ante, to the point that the tension is lost and starts becoming a dark comedy. When they introduced the wolves, because apparently New England just has packs of wolves roaming the countryside, it led to me laughing more than anything else. Like, how much more fucked do these people need to be? Their limbs freezing solid and falling off isn’t enough, having to piss yourself because you’re stuck 20 feet in the air on a metal bench isn’t enough, you have to add being mauled to death on top of it. By the end of the film I can’t even say I felt catharsis, just this sense of ‘yep, it’s over’, and I don’t know if I would have felt that way if they had just pull themselves back a bit.
When Frozen is good however, it’s the first film I’ve seen in a while that made me feel genuinely uncomfortable watching it, so for that it gets the recommendation. While I think Adam Green’s writing choices are overindulgent and ultimately undercut the emotional impact of the story, it’s also a great example of how you really don’t need much in order to make an effective film, especially when it comes to horror and thrillers. No 100 million dollar budgets, no A-list actors, just a good idea and a good crew. So if it’s a little chilly outside when Halloween rolls around pop this one in and see where it takes you. You’ll probably never want to go skiing ever again, if you’re one of those weirdos that go skiing, but hey, there’s always SSX Tricky.
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