Frozen sits in a mini-genre of wilderness survival horror films, along with Open Water (2003), Black Water (2007) and the non-genre likes of Touching the Void (2003) and Rescue Dawn (2006) – horror films that do not feature psychos or monsters but ordinary people stranded in the wild and at prey to the wildlife and environmental extremes there. Equally, ever since Phone Booth (2002), filmmakers seem to have been holding an unofficial competition to contain a story in as little space as possible – Wind Chill (2007) told a ghost story inside the front seat of a car; Buried (2010) was entirely set around Ryan Reynolds trapped inside a coffin; The Night Chronicles 1: Devil (2010) featured five people trapped inside an elevator with The Devil; 127 Hours (2010) with trapped James Franco in a crevasse; while Open Water featured no sets, just two characters swimming in the water; and Black Water trapped its three characters in a tree. Like these films, Frozen seems to be trying to strip sets to a minimum and has its three characters trapped inside a ski chairlift for the bulk of the film. The film was shot on a real ski field in Utah where the actors were inside an actual chairlift some sixty feet above the ground while Adam Green and his cameraman sat in a chair opposite.

In these films, with so much of the regular accoutrement of survival stripped away – compare these survival horror films to something like Jaws (1975) where the protagonists go into action relatively well equipped and evenly paired against their nemesis – something as small as a dropped glove, a ski pole or a scarf being thrown and failing to reach far enough can become tragedies. These are dramas that would be absurdly trivial were Frozen located on the ground but due to the film pushing them into environmental extremes become life or death dramas. Films like these also ride rollercoasters of suspense – of possibilities for escape raised and great struggles to achieve them, only to see such hopes repeatedly dashed. Adam Green does a fine job of sustaining this rollercoaster during the sequences with Shawn Ashmore’s climb along the cable or during the collapse of the bolts and especially when the wolves gather to attack Kevin Zegers. There are some genuinely harrowing sequences in the film – the scene where Kevin Zegers makes the jump to the ground and promptly breaks both of his legs is one of the most gut wrenching and uncomfortable that one has watched in a film in some time. Other scenes like the wolf attack or where Emma Bell wakes up and discovers that she has left her bare hand on the steel safety bar and the skin has frozen to it, leaving her having to pry it off have a genuine ick factor to them. The fact that Frozen takes the time to let you become involved in the characters’ drama before pulling such gross-out scenes gives them far more horrific impact than random gut-splatterings do.

Adam Green does an excellent job of drawing out the suspense. The camerawork makes expansive use of the mountainside, opening it up to fully show the precariousness of the situation. The three actors chosen – Kevin Zegers, Shawn Ashmore and Emma Bell – all do a fine job. These are not standard teen characters you get in a formula horror film but come with shadings, antipathies towards one another and back-stories. Various critics have nitpicked holes in the scenario – why didn’t they knot their clothes together and climb down? – but the film works without too many of these incredulities plaguing the back of one’s mind – my only nitpick was wondering how wolves end up so close to a ski resort, would not the owners do something to relocate or even shoot them lest they endanger regular skiers? The dialogue is reasonable and credible with Adam Green even throwing in several amusing fan service speeches riffing off Jaws and Return of the Jedi (1983).