Movie Review: Frozen

Adam Green became a darling in the horror community with his 80's-esque slasher flick Hatchet. My wife and I went to see Hatchet on our first wedding anniversary and we...well, we did not enjoy it. I have had the DVD sitting on my shelf for a few months now and I keep meaning to give it a second chance but it hasn't happened yet.

But this isn't about Hatchet, it's about Green's most recent release: Frozen.

Frozen tells the story of three young people trapped on a ski resort chair lift. It's a simple enough concept and one that seems hard upon first hearing about to imagine stretched into a full length feature. Amazingly, this is a wonderful picture. It's chilling (pun originally not intended, realized and now fully intended) and incredibly well paced.

The biggest worry with simple concept horror movies like this is that the start will be incredibly slow to build to the "good parts" as they pretend they're developing characters rather than just trying to make sure they hit 90 minutes to make it feature-length. There is a bit of character development early on but it's effective in making you care about what happens to the three main characters going forward.

There are plenty of intensely violent moments making it very much the "modern" horror film. Taking such a simple concept and developing it into such a tense movie that there were many reports of audience members fainting while watching it in theatres really speaks highly of what Green can do when he focuses in on telling a story rather than trying to be clever and "insidey" like he did with Hatchet.

I don't want to go into much detail in hopes that someone who actually reads this blog decides to give the film a watch. Frozen is must watch stuff, it's not perfect but it is one of the most well crafted and simple releases of the past few years in the genre.

Final Score: 4/5