Toronto Star: FROZEN is a chill a minute

originally published at Toronto Star:

Frozen: A chill a minute

Adam Green gets maxi fright from mini plot about skiers trapped on a mountain

Frozen

(3.5 out of 4)

Starring Kevin Zegers, Shawn Ashmore and Emma Bell. Directed by Adam Green. 85 minutes. At major theatres. 14A

by Peter Howell

The biggest frights come softly and without warning.

They're the mysterious sounds you awaken to in the middle of the night. The slow footsteps in a supposedly empty house. The sudden movements in a dark garden.

They're also physical, like the chill that slides up your spine as you realize you're stranded on a ski lift, high above a vacated mountain. This is the terror scenario for Frozen, Adam Green's masterfully minimalist horror.

Arriving in theatres immediately after its Sundance premiere, it's almost a Canadian movie, because the two male leads are from Toronto.

Dan (Kevin Zegers), Joe (Shawn Ashmore) and Parker (American Emma Bell) are three pals looking for cheap thrills. They've managed to scam one last run down a ski mountain from a lift operator who is anxious to get home.

The operator warns them that bad weather and nightfall are both closing in, and the mountain must be shuttered until the following weekend. Dan, Joe and Parker promise they'll be right up and down.

Things don't go as planned, and that's putting it mildly. Not much more of the plot can be revealed, except to say that there's perhaps no more lonely spot on Earth than being attached to a slender wire high above a dark mountain.

And what is that sound, off in the distance? What is it, and is it getting any closer?

Taking a dramatic turn from the slasher hilarity of his breakthrough feature Hatchet, writer/director Green plays it straight with a script that has the virtue of simplicity.

We are given a few minutes to get to know Dan and Parker, who are boyfriend and girlfriend, and Joe, who feels like a fifth wheel. Dan is bossy, Parker is coy and Joe is a little moody.

Then it's straight up that mountain, where time stands still.

Not for the viewer, who will have reason to think of Open Water and Jaws before the final credits roll.

The tension is almost unbearable. One actor loses a glove, and it registers like a grenade strike. But hypothermia isn't the most immediate threat facing the three stranded skiers.

Frozen reminds us that you don't need much to make a good scary movie.

Just a strong story, good actors and an abiding sense of how things dangle in the dark.