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!