Feb 22, 2011

Final Girl Film Club: Frozen

Note: This post is a part of Stacie Ponder's Final Girl Film Club.  She picks 'em, we watch and review 'em.  It's so easy that even an idiot like me can figger it out.  Go check out her site later on today to see her review and some links to some of the other Film Club gang.  It's SUPER fun!  Ahem...
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Have you seen or heard about the film Open Water?  It's one of those based-on-reality films that was/is one of my worst nightmares.  Being stranded out at sea, surrounded by hungry sharks.  The couple in the film (and in real life) were accidentally left behind from a scuba expedition when the dive-boat crew messed up the headcount.  When they surface, they see the boat is gone and there is no land in sight.  Sharks come cruising and it's all "nom nom nom" after that.

Frozen is like that, but with skiing/snowboarding instead of scuba diving.  And careless ski-lift operators instead of a careless dive-boat crew.  And wolves instead of sharks.  Other than that, it's exactly like Open Water.

Doesn't sound plausible, does it?  It's really not.  But lets give it the old college try to explain how that shit might happen. 

A dude, his girlfriend/beard and his best friend/secret gay crush head to the mountains (New England?) for a day of skiing and catty in-fighting.  Instead of spending money on ski-lift passes, they bribe the operator with $100.  Did they save a lot of money?  I have no idea.  Skiing isn't my bag.  But they must have, because they are beaming with delight at all the money they saved.  But after a day of bunny trails because of the lame girlfriend/beard, the fellas decide they want one more run so they can get their speed on.  They feel the need...the need for speed!  Hmm...why does that sound familiar?  Lemme get back to that.

Now I must have blacked out momentarily, because I seem to remember her deciding to hang out and wait while they blaze fiercely down the mountain.  But there she was, getting on the ski lift with them.  I think "someone" was trying to break that nice gay couple up, if you ask me.  So it's now dark out and the ski-lift operator balks at letting them take one more run because there is some weather coming in.  He eventually relents, then he has to take a piss or something and he winds up forgetting about them.  His replacement, thinking everyone is off the mountain, stops the ski-lift while they are halfway up the mountain, turns off the lights and goes home.  And this was a Sunday night, so the mountain won't re-open again until Friday. 

Really?  Do they do that?  People don't go skiing during the week?  Like I said, it isn't my bag.

So now the three of them are stuck...I don't know how high up in the air on a ski-chair as a winter storm blows in.  I say that I don't know how high they are up because they never say and they never ask.  That's all I would be talking about.  "How far do you think it is to the ground?  Can a person survive a jump like that?  How about we tie some of our clothes together and lower one of us to the ground?  Or at least halfway?  What do you guys think?"

Having that conversation would have really been a good idea.  Instead they decide to panic, not cover up their exposed faces from the elements (that was driving me nuts!) and not huddle for warmth (driving me nuts times two!).  Three really bad ideas.  You can probably guess where this winds up.  Yup, frostbite, compound fractures and a lot of "nom nom nom" once the wolves come cruising.

OK...it wasn't awful.  But it wasn't very good either.  I felt like they all could have come through the other side of this thing if they just took a moment and figured some stuff out.  But instead, they decided to ignore a lot of obvious stuff, sit around like retards and then leap (hehe) directly into the danger zone. 

The danger zone?  Why does that sound familiar?  And that need for speed thing, what was that all about?  Wait a minute.  Oh yeah, the dude's best friend/secret gay crush is played by Shawn Ashmore.  He also played Iceman in the X-Men films.  And Val Kilmer famously played Iceman in Top Gun, another movie with a lot of latent gay stuff going down.  I mean, besides Tom Cruise being in it.

"Highway to the danger zone.  I'll take you right in to the danger zone!"

Two quick thumbs up the film DOES deserve.  One of the productions companies is called A Bigger Boat.  I like that.  And a snowplow dude in the film was played by Kane Hodder...Jason Vorhees himself! Ah, you big lug.  I can't quit you!

16 comments:

Dave2 said...

I've seen both Open Water AND Frozen and think they both pretty much sucked... even if they weren't the same movie in two different locations. These kind of films with all the waiting leave me wondering if the people responsible for the film are actively TRYING to make people bored... or if they honestly don't realize how frickin' boring they are?

Verdant Earl said...

Dave2 - this one I didn't care about at all, but I really thought I was gonna be scared by Open Water because of my shark phobia. But, like you said, I was mostly just bored.

sybil law said...

They both sound perfectly awful. I hate movies like that - like you, I'd figure out some fricking way to get down!

Verdant Earl said...

Sybil - Oh, I would definitely die if I were in those situations. It just bothers me that they didn't even try.

Slyde said...

honestly, i loved frozen. saw it last week.

but im a sucker for that genre.

Verdant Earl said...

Slyde - what genre? The "idiots waiting around for something bad to happen" genre?

Mrs. Hall said...

Saw this yesterday. I was too late for the club. but yeah, the ENTIRE time Mr. Hall kept making commentary on their stupid survival choices.

And. . .as for me . . . after the ski lift stopped, I was hoping they would just push the girl off. I really didn't like the whiney girl.

Yeah, wasn't that good. And AWESOME!! I TOTALLY noticed the cameo from Jason!!

And Mr. Hall doubted me.

ok, good times!!

Verdant Earl said...

Holly - The girl didn't bother me. I was hoping for a fall for Shawn Ashmore. I don't know why. He really bugged me in this with his moody bro-mance.

Paticus said...

Did they have an explanation why they did not use a cellphone to call for help? Was it set back in the 80's?

Mrs. Hall said...

They said something about the cell phone being in a locker. because you want to leave your cell phone in a locker when your being a douchebag and going out for one more run while the place is closing down.

Verdant Earl said...

Paticus - They explained it, see Holly's answer below. At least they didn't accidentally drop it or spend five minutes trying to get a signal on the top of a mountain.

Holly - Ha!

Paticus said...

I would think you would want to have a cell phone on you if you were skiing, but skiing is also not my thing, so maybe there's some logical reason not have it with you. After you mentioned it, I'm a little surprised they didn't drop it.

Verdant Earl said...

Paticus - they dropped everything else useful.

Lazarus Lupin said...

I would want my cell phone and certainly I'd want gloves. And you are right that they spent far too much time huddled like rabbits. every moment on that lift was a moment of added dehydration, exhaustion, and of course exposure to deal with.

Lazarus Lupin
http://strangespanner.blogspot.com/
art and review

Banned In Queensland said...

I love the way some people are saying “that doesn’t make sense” before adding “but I’ve never been skiing”.

Re: mobile phones - Phone reception is notoriously bad at a lot of ski fields. Not horror-movie-contrivance bad, but genuinely-real-life bad. Even if reception was OK, all skiers crash, so having your mobile in your pocket seems like a really good way to destroy it. So why run the risk? I mean, what are you going to do with it on a ski slope? You can’t use it while you’re skiing. If you try to use it on the lift you could drop it. It really doesn’t make much sense to take a mobile phone onto a ski slope, so it wasn’t a stretch that the trio in Frozen didn’t have one.

Re: taking your clothes off and making a rope to climb down – if you’ve ever been skiing you’d know there are two obvious problems with this approach: it’s way too high and it’s way too cold. I would actually try waiting it out before attempting that shit.

The biggest, credibility-stretching moment in the film is actually when Parker throws her glove at the wolves and then proceeds to nod off with her hand on the railing. That wouldn’t happen. Only an idiot would throw their glove away (although it is established that Parker is a newbie), and if you did lose a glove you sure as hell wouldn’t be resting your bare hand on a rail.

Verdant Earl said...

Lazarus - Yeah, I don't know the ski protocol about cell phones. Maybe they couldn't get reception on the mountain even if they brought it.

Banned - Heya! Yeah, a lot of it was nonsense to me since I don't ski, so maybe it did make some sense. But I have been out in the cold and not keeping their faces covered or huddling together for warmth didn't make any sense at all. And I think she dropped the glove when she was having a smoke. Before the wolves showed up. Either way, you're right. I think she would have kept that hand securely in her pocket.