“They don’t just leave people on chairs,” rationalizes Kevin Zegers’ character Dan Walker in the thriller Frozen.
The film opens with three friends at a ski hill trying to figure out a way to get on the hill without purchasing lift tickets. The characters are Joe (Shawn Ashmore, who also plays Iceman in X-Men; whose powers do not make an appearance in this film), his best friend Dan (Zegers) and Dan’s girlfriend Parker (Emma Bell). They succeed by paying off the guy operating the lift and spend the day having a good time in the snow. Upbeat music plays over a montage of snow frolicking. As the day starts to come to a close, however, Joe starts itching for “one last run.”
Basically, this film opens with regular teen movie dialogue that manipulates you into thinking that it is going to be a tame thriller with maybe a single moment of doubt with a happy ending. The way they trick you is through introducing a nice cute girl who Joe meets when he helps her with her snowboard bindings (oh yeah), making you think that the only logical reason for introducing this character would be so that she and Joe could hook up at the end.
But that doesn’t happen. Why not? Well, because they had to go on “one last run” when it is pitch-fucking-dark outside.
After they pay him off again, the lift operator gets distracted by an impending shift switch that would make him miss his brother’s bachelor party. When he leaves to sort out the debacle, the lift operator leaves the lift in the hands of his dim-witted (possibly stoned) buddy, whose “fer sure, man” attitude doesn’t necessarily assure the viewers of the skiers’ safety.
The chair lift lurches to a stop, with our protagonists still on it. The floodlights go out. Even the moon goes out. Then it starts snowing.
At first they seem pretty positive that it’s just a routine stop, or that the power went out. But after a failed attempt to garner the attention of a possible saviour, it starts to dawn on them that they are stuck up there.
They use the time, as most of us would, to discuss the worst way to die. The unanimous winner is death via Sarlacc pit (see: Return of the Jedi). At this point you might agree that being digested over a thousand years in the pit of Sarlacc would be the worst way to go — but give it a little time.
The film takes a surprising and disturbing turn when Joe whips out his wiener to pee off the chairlift. And then his friend Dan jumps off the lift and breaks both his legs. This is when shit gets real.
Frozen is an emotional ride whose level of cheese balances well with the suspense of the situation. The possibility of it happening in real life is, admittedly, scary. There are no vampires, sub-human species or axe murderers — just some kids trapped on a chair-lift in freezing cold weather.
By the open-ended conclusion of the movie we’ve endured pee, wolves, blood, ice, razor-sharp wires (that are not built for climbing on), frostbite and a lot of bones sticking out of places they ought not to be, all while maintaining a conversation about past loves, hope for the future and reminiscing about girls who were “way into Aerosmith.”
The ending challenges the previously established notion that the pit of Sarlacc is the worst way to die.
The moral of the story? Pay for your goddamn lift tickets.