Rented this little 90-minute flick last night for $1 and thought it was worth mentioning.
It actually started with an interesting premise. Three kids talk their way onto a ski-lift for “one last run” before the mountain shuts down operations for the week. Before they get to the top there is some negligent miscommunication between operators and, bingo, our group of three is stuck many feet up in the air on a frozen mountainside. What happens next unfolds for the next 75 minutes.
It’s not camp and actually trys to play out seriously and logically. Too bad there are too many unbelievable moments that could have easily been fixed.
For starters here they are freezing to death complaining about how their faces are getting frostbitten. But do they ever attempt to cover their faces with their supplied hoods, hats, scarves, or even zipping up their jackets high collars? Nope. They just let the frostbite set in. The girl even loses a glove to which you’d think “okay, pull your hand up the sleeve, or put it in your pocket.” Nope. She just leaves it exposed from that point on. Even falling asleep with it resting on the metal railing.
Some of these others I should spoiler.
[spoiler]I bought into the idea of wolves coming out at night in the dark looking for food. But the next day when they come after the kid in broad daylight? If this was common wouldn’t lots of skiers get randomly attacked by wolves?
And I thought it was pretty accurate when a kid attempted to traverse the wires hand over hand only to get out about three feet and discover “oh hell no”, cuts up his hands in the process, and scrambles back onto the chair. But that accuracy was thrown away completely when he later tries again and manages to go the 50 yards with bloodied cold hands.
And it was pretty lame to throw in the “oh-oh, now the bolt holding the chair is starting to come loose:rolleyes:”. [/spoiler]
So overall not a bad way to kill 90 minutes but a pity to throw logic and accuracy out the window when it would have been so easy not to.
I saw this in the theater in early February. It had played at Sundance and I was intrigued by the concept so I went on opening night. I’m glad I did, because it only played a week. I thought it was a nifty little original movie. Not perfect or a classic, but I enjoyed it. Maybe “enjoyed” isn’t the right word. I liked it.
She did have her hand in her pocket or pulled inside her sleeve most of the time. She didn’t fall asleep with it resting on the metal railing. Her fingers had started to turn dark, meaning the circulation was bad, meaning she probably couldn’t feel her fingers. Sometime while she was asleep she must have shifted position and unconsciously put her hand on the railing. Since she couldn’t feel the cold, it didn’t wake her up. I thought it was very realistic. Excruciatingly realistic. Man, those sound effects…I was cringing in empathy.
But yeah, they could have bundled themselves up a bit more. I would have had my head down inside my coat, forget dialogue and script. But the actors had to talk to each other.
Ah, it’s a horror movie. I thought it was more realistic than most horror movies.
I don’t know who Kane Hodder is. What movies are you talking about?
I have no idea how wolves act and don’t really care. Those scenes were very effective. They’re wild animals. Hungry and angry wild animals seem fully capable of attacking and eating idiot skiers. They’re scary, outside of Never Cry Wolf, where they’re really, really cool. Maybe it should have been bears instead though.
I hated the two guy characters and, except for the fact that she hung around idiots, liked the female character. That girl was a pretty good actress. Her reactions to what happened to her boyfriend made me cry, and I was rooting for the wolves!
Equipoise, Kane Hodder played Jason in several of the F13 movies. He’s a fan favorite as the character.
[spoiler]I saw Frozen on OnDemand, and thought the guys were such dickbags that it was hard to be sympathetic to them. I was actaully laughing my ass off when boyfriend got eaten by wolves. I thought it was just such hilariously shitty luck.
Living in a cold climate, I also agree that it was annoying to see the characters not bundle up the way they would if they’d have really been as cold as were supposed to think they were (I guess the director was more concerned about keeping their faces uncovered than about realism. The reality is that they would have borrowed into those coats. I wonder if anyone involved in that movie has ever been out in real cold), and I did not buy it all that the girl could be stupid enough to fall asleep with her hand on the bar.
It also seriously bugged me when the girl pissed her pants instead of pulling them down to piss over the side. Why would she give herself wet pants and underwear (which, besides being seriously unfomfortable, is a way to hasten hypothermia) out of a sense of pointless modesty? Idiot.
Oh, and when the boyfriend jumped down from the lift, he did it in the stupidest way possible – stiffening his legs and landing feet first. It was like he was consciously trying to land in a way most guaranteed to break his legs. Look for a soft pillow of snow, and land on your back, you moron.[/spoiler]
I guess I watched it to the end, so it wasn’t wasn’t boring or unwatchable, but the charaters did every fucking thing wrong.
Oh, and after the way they scammed their way onto the lift in the first place, then whined and manipulated to get some extra time up there, I was kind of glad they got stuck up there. If they weren’t such entitled little tools, it wouldn’t have happened.
I’m having trouble believing three kids on a ski lift without 3 different cell phones (based on every recent ski trip I’ve taken). Did they use the “out of range of a cell tower” gag?
In the beginning one of the guys was hitting on a girl at the ski lodge and made some remark about how hi likes to ski without carrying a phone. I guess this was inserted to address your complaint but they failed to explain exactly why he doesn’t like to carry one.
I was at Squaw Valley one winter and the weather started getting bad in the late afternoon. I missed the turnoff for the lodge I was supposed to go to, and kept going hoping to see something obvious. I found a lift, and the “closed” sign was already on it. I asked the guy if I could get to whichever lodge it was, and he said, yeah, but the visibility was pretty bad. I responded that the visibility was bad everywhere, and got on the lift.
It was a long lift. I was by myself. I did not have a cell phone. After a few minutes, I started thinking: “Hmm, the closed sign was already on. He didn’t seem like he was paying that much attention when I got on. What if they turn the lift off.” I couldn’t even see the ground. I could barely see the next chair in front of me.
Of course, the lift kept running. But I think it’s a great premise for a horror movie.
I was irritated by those fools in the movie. And eaten by wolves?? Really?? If a man-eating wolf ever showed up downstate at Greek Peak and chomped a skier, the news media here would just f’ing EXPLODE withe excitement. Cell phones, skiers, and villainizing wolves, not three of my favorite things.
I would’ve tied a rope out of our jackets/sweaters/snowpants and have been off the lift in about 15 minutes. It was tough to believe that the characters in the movie wouldn’t have thought of that.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. Of course once you got down to the ground you’d have to book it back down the slope with no clothes on but your undies.
Well, they should have made a ladder out of their clothes and let the girl climb down (as she would have been the lightest). Then the guys could have pulled the ladder back up, untied it, tossed the girl’s clothing down to her, then gotten dressed again themselves. Then it would have been a matter of waiting for her to fetch help.
The cellphone thing really was stupid. The little bastards I work with can’t stay off their precious phones for five minutes (not a joke) and we’re supposed to believe all three of these kids left their phones behind? (And I would actually recommend that someone take their phone with them if they’re going skiing.)
And, in this day and age, would wolves, unless they were starving, really attack a human? Especially when there are other humans around? And, in the case of the second guy, a human who was mobile and armed? I’m not a wolf expert but that just didn’t seem kosher.
So, a tense movie to be sure, but just don’t think about it too much…
They mention in the beginning of the film that they come to the mountain to escape from the real world, which is why they leave the cell phones in their car - and demanded that the girl do so as well.
Yeah, I could buy the wolves chowing down on an injured human, but when the second guy got down, he armed himself with the pole. There’s no way in hell that a wolf would try to fight back with someone as big as them.
Sorry but I ain’t buying it. Those self-entitled little bastards wouldn’t be caught dead without their cellphones. Shoot, the little punk-asses I work with hardly EVER put their phones away. Let’s face it: it was a lame excuse the filmmakers used to get over an insurmountable obstacle.
Finally saw this movie this last weekend, over Netflix. I’d been looking forward to it- I’m a sucker for survival movies.
This one pissed me off.
I agree with everyone else who has said they didn’t seem too worried about being cold- hell, I would’ve zipped up as much as possible, wear my damn hood, and pull my arms inside my jacket. Sure, talking lumps-o-coat probably wouldn’t have made for good cinema, but it would’ve been a lot more realistic. There wasn’t even any mention of how thirsty they’d be, was there?
And you’d think a movie named “Frozen” … would’ve had at least *one *of the characters, you know, freeze to death. But no, they had to be eaten by wolves. I couldn’t roll my eyes far enough back into my head for that one.
Just saw it last night. I dug it, it made me want to go skiing. Much like The Blair Witch Project made me want to go camping.
I was particularly happy to see that Emma Bell did pretty well in it. She played the cute sister that got zombified on The Walking Dead, which is the only other thing I’ve seen her in. Such a cutie, they need to get her more work.
Mike Gencarelli: Tell us how it was working on that film? Emma Bell: We were actually up on a real ski lift. We shot for six weeks in the winter…we shot through February and March in Utah. We were sixty feet above the ground. We got hit with constant blizzards while we were shooting. We had three weeks of night shoots. But it was beautiful because it all worked so well for the film. And the cast all pulled together through the experience. And it made it all seem more real because you’re surviving the shoot. The director pushed to have the shoot out in the elements. Some people wanted to film it all on a stage with green screen. And the argument was how are we going to act like it’s really cold when it’s really 72 degrees.
I imagine the actors had the same complaints you all have about not covering their faces. heh.
