Up in the air, with wolves down below

February 05, 2010|By Michael Phillips, TRIBUNE NEWSPAPERS CRITIC

'Frozen' **1/2

The stuck-on-a-chairlift nail-biter "Frozen" joins a sub-genre of tightly confined thrillers exploiting their settings for maximum nervousness within minimum yardage. Alfred Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" did it; David Fincher's "Panic Room" did it; so, reportedly, does the new film "Buried," which recently premiered at Sundance and features Ryan Reynolds as a man stuck in a box.

The intentions behind "Frozen" are pretty simple. Writer-director Adam Green (who made "Hatchet") wants you to approach the scenario of being stranded, in the cold, on a ski lift, for days, with the trepidation it deserves. Heading up the mountain for their last run of the night, three snowboarders played by Kevin Zegers, Shawn Ashmore and Emma Bell find themselves, through a series of unfortunate events, alone on the mountain, in their chair on the chair-lift, 100 feet up with the resort shut down. Various adversaries stand between living and dying for these three, among them frostbite, wolves and pointless, panicky bickering, in between sensitive dialogue interludes wherein they get to know each other a little better under dire conditions.

Green has talent -- more, I think, as a writer than a director. Too often the tension of the situation is defused through purely visual matters. When we see the actors in the chairlift from a low angle that appears to be 10 or 15 feet beneath their feet, it's hard to believe in the illusion of danger. Other details limit our full engagement: Why, for example, does Bell's character, dealing with frostbite and wind and what have you, keep her un-gloved hand on the metal safety bar? She wouldn't do that. It'd be cold. She'd avoid doing that.

That said, the film moves along, in its paradoxically static way, at a pretty fair clip. I look forward to Green's follow-up. And now that he's made the chairlift thriller, it's up to someone else to make a horror film about an errant, possessed, strangulating tow-rope.

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MPAA rating: R (for some disturbing images and language)

Cast: Kevin Zegers (Dan); Shawn Ashmore (Joe); Emma Bell (Parker)

Credits: Written and directed by Adam Green; produced by Peter Block and Cory Neal. An Anchor Bay Films release. Running time: 1:34. Opens Friday.