Frozen (2010)

dir. Adam Green


[This "review" is part of Final Girl's Film Club.]

[Side note: This "review" wins the award for weirdest shit I ever put on my blog. Second Side note: I watched this movie on Netflix streaming and I don't know how to capture images while doing that. Instead of using Frozen stuff, I included below pictures from other snow-filled horror movies.]

"I believe in America. America has made my fortune. And I raised my daughter in the American fashion. I gave her freedom but taught her never to dishonor the free enterprise system. She found a boyfriend, not a capitalist. She worked at soup kitchens with him. They didn't ask for payment. I didn't protest. Two weeks ago he took her for a drive, with a busload of orphans. He took them to my ski resort and forced her to ask me for a charity group discount for the orphans. She resisted. She kept her honor. So he guilted her. Like an animal. When I went to her arriving bus, her will was broken. There were too many orphans. She and now I were powerless to resist. I gave them their group discount. My daughter lost her sense of purpose. She was changed. She couldn't even weep because of her change. But I wept. Why did I weep? That busload of orphans was profit lost. I will never have that money back."

The bespectacled George took a long, deep drag from his cigarette before resuming. "I never thought this could happen to me, this grifting. I work. I stand firm. I collect. But orphans want to get by. Orphans try to get by. Orphans get by...without paying enough. What could have been extremely profitable was now just profitable. I can't expect all of you to understand. Perhaps you haven't been affected by orphans. But this is a problem. It is real. Believe me-"

"I know! You think I...you think we don't know! Because this is your first time, you speak as if it is not happening to us on a continual basis. I've warned you many times of these orphans. If this is what it took for you to take notice of this ongoing crime, then so the better. Am I right?" The four other suited-men at the mahogany conference table harrumphed in agreement with the bulldog-faced Larry.

George stroked his chin and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the mountain slope, the "Ski Resort Owner Convention 2010" banner hanging inches from his head. Seemingly lost in contemplation, George stared at the virgin powder below. Without turning around, George spoke, "For too long I turned a deaf ear to your pleas. I apologize. I now know and feel your profit loss." George turned around and again faced the men, "but gentlemen we could sit here all day throwing blame—who ignored who and the like—but this won't solve our problem. Yes I was slow on the uptake, but I come here as a man humbled, a man asking forgiveness, and a man asking for your help. We need to fight this problem; we need ideas and we need them now."

Mikey ran a comb through his greased-back her before piping in, "How's abouts we's just busts the little orphans' kneecaps. No kneecaps, no skiings."

[Have you readers seen The Children? If not you should really watch it.]


Larry shook his head, "Don't you think we already thought about that? No, we've looked into it. There are laws put in place against just that sort of thing. Lots of laws."

"I'm just sayings is alls."

The rotund Hank shook his head, "Damn gubmint."

Larry addressed Hank, "Hank, do you have any ideas?"

"Huh?"

"Do you have any ideas? You come to every one of these meetings, contributing nothing aside from the occasional one-liner. Never once have you given us anything constructive to work with."

"Maybe if I thought y'alls could get any shit done, I'd care more about pitching in."

George barked at the men, "Gentlemen, stop this petty sniping. Let's get down to brass tacks. How do we stop those godforsaken orphans from robbing our profits? As Larry mentioned, harming them is out of the question but what about the threat of harm? Now we don't-"

Larry interrupted, "I've looked into that too. Threatening a crime can sometimes be treated just as severely as a crime."

Mikey responded, "Whats abouts they's crimes of not payings us enoughs?"

George resumed, "If you guys had let me finish, what I was about to say was: now we don't have to actually threaten to harm the orphans, as satisfying as that would be. No, we just need to make them fear the slopes."

The confused Hank jumped in, "I ain't see what the Vietcong's got to do with this."

George shook his head. The annoyed Larry addressed Hank, "Hank, go stand in the corner."

"What? Every time we got a meeting, you make me-"

"Hank! Less talking. More corner."

Angered grumbling from Hank as the defeated man moved to the corner of the conference room.

George: "As I was saying, as long as the orphans fear the slo-...fear skiing, they aren't gonna come. Now how do we make them afraid?"

Larry's eyes lit up, "PSA's. Goddamn, we're on the same page."

"Damn, right. PSA's. All we have to do is make a short little film showing orphans harmed after paying half-price for lift-tickets. We make it scary enough and no orphan will come within five miles of a ski lift."

The previously silent Cooper removed his sunglasses as he addressed the men, "How far up your asses do you guys store your heads?"

[If beards could fuck, I would totally have sex with this. In case anyone who knows me is wondering, yes, Kurt Russell in The Thing is the reason I decided to grow my own woefully only adequate beard.]


George: "Excuse me?"

Cooper: "You think you're gonna solve your problem by making a bunch of orphans poop their pants. You aren't gonna do shit is what you're gonna do. Whether or not they're scared, they'll still invade our slopes by the busloads. Orphans don't drive. The drivers, they're the ones you need to scare. If you want to solve the problem, you gotta cut off the head. "

Larry: "I'm interested."

Cooper: "George, how old did you say your daughter was?'

"Umm, about twenty, I guess."

"Larry, how old are the people who drive the orphans to your slopes?"

"Probably about the same."

"Just as I thought. Just the same as the ones who drive orphans to my slopes. Now, it's those folks, the college age folks we gotta scare. We make a PSA that...fuck it, we make a feature-length film—the longer it is, the more they're scared—a feature length film with college age types getting what for after paying less than they should for lift-tickets."

George: "Should we do research on these kids for the characters in the movie. Should I get to know my daughter, find out what she's like?"

Cooper: "Fuck that. If we make these characters too real, too specific, audiences will be less likely to identify with them. We make these characters and their dialogue as flat, boring, and generic as possible. We want everyone watching to think, 'hey, this vague recreation of a young human type kinda resembles me. I'm also that age, and I walk and talk."

Larry: "Ok, shoot. What're you thinking for the movie?"

Cooper: "Imagine: Three generic college types go skiing. They forgo lift tickets. Instead, they con the lift operator into letting them ski for a smaller chunk of change. After skiing all day, instead of going home, the three douches force the lift operator into letting them go up for a little night skiing. While they're going up the lift, the lift operator gets called away and asks another man to fill in for him. That guy stops the lift, while the kids are on it, not realizing they're on it. They get stuck-"

Larry: "Wait, that's something that could never happen. We have so many safeguards in place for that."

Cooper: "Doesn't matter. We just gotta scare the shit out of them. So anyways, they're stuck on the lift, no way to get away aside from falling a body-breaking height. If they want to climb on the wire, their hands will get cut up by the sharp wire. And then they find out that this ski slope is home to lots and lots of wolves. Even if they get to the ground, the wolves will immediately devour them."

Larry: "Wait, how...umm...wait...well, if all these wolves are there, all these wolves that kill anyone on site, wouldn't the regular skiers constantly get destroyed by wolves? I can't imagine Mount Wolf Kill would stay in business too long."

Cooper: "Doesn't matter. We just gotta scare the shit out of them. So anyways, these three kids have little-to-no survival options. Either freeze to death, fall to likely death, or get eaten by wolves. We just scare the shit out of the shits."

[Artist's depiction of freezing to death.]


Larry: "How do we fill the running time with this stuff? Don't you think feature length is a little overkill?"

Cooper: "While waiting for death, the kids can just have a lot of boring, generic, uninvolving conversations."

George: "Works for me. Let's get this started."

[My review of Frozen: Although I had problems with it, much of it was genuinely terrifying.]

[The trailer:]


Dave's Rating: