INTRO: Disney’s Frozen tells of the adventure Princess Anna goes on to save her kingdom from the curse of an infinite winter that was accidentally caused by her sister, Queen Elsa. But everybody knows that story. The movie made over a billion dollars. So today we’re going to talk about the other Frozen. The one that was released before Disney introduced viewers to Sven the reindeer and Olaf the snowman. This one is a harrowing thriller about three people struggling to survive while stranded in the winter elements. And it happens to be the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw.
CREATORS / CAST: The Frozen not made by Disney came from Adam Green, the filmmaker best known for masterminding the Hatchet slasher franchise. Green was watching a weather report on the news in Los Angeles when an image of the Big Bear Mountain ski resort showed up on screen. It was early in the morning and the resort was closed at the time. And while watching the lift chairs sway in the wind, Green was reminded of his own skiing experiences in New England. He would go to places that would only be open from Friday through Sunday, and he remembered being on the last run on Sunday nights. Hearing the lift stop. Having the fear that the place had closed for the week without making sure there weren’t still skiiers there. The fear that he was going to be stuck in the snowy wilderness all week. And that’s when the idea for Frozen hit him.
Grace, a living dead baby movie Green produced, was filming at that time. So while on the set of Grace, Green would go off into a quiet area and work on the script for Frozen. Crafting a story about three people – longtime best friends Dan Walker and Joe Lynch, and Dan’s girlfriend Parker O’Neil – getting stuck on a ski lift chair when a resort closes down for the week. Dangling fifty feet off the ground for days, dealing with the cold and snow, the subzero wind chill, trying to figure out a way to survive this ordeal, how to safely get down to the ground, and how to escape from the wolves that gather below them.
Green was hoping to get Frozen into production as quickly as possible. But most companies he talked to about the project wanted to hold off for a while. Some of them demanded that he make changes to the script. Then the project caught the attention of former Lionsgate executive Peter Block, who had just launched his own production company, A Bigger Boat. Block was happy with the script and was willing to put Frozen on the fast track. So Green closed a deal with him. A Bigger Boat decided to make Frozen in late October of 2008, and by early December Green was looking for the perfect shooting location. Filming would begin in February of 2009.
The actors cast in the roles of Dan, Lynch, and Parker along the way were Kevin Zegers, Shawn Ashmore, and Emma Bell. And just like their characters, Zegers and Ashmore had been friends for a long time, so they were able to bring their natural camaraderie to the screen. Bell’s character Parker is someone who just recently entered the picture, and Lynch isn’t very happy that Dan has brought her along on their ski day.
Most of the film is carried on the shoulders of Dan, Lynch, and Parker. Other characters don’t have a whole lot of screen time. But there were a few roles to fill. Green’s then-girlfriend Rileah Vanderbilt was cast as Shannon, a skiier who catches Lynch’s attention before things go terribly wrong. Ed Ackerman plays ski lift operator Jason. Adam Johnson plays Rifkin, another resort employee. Green and his fellow filmmaker Joe Lynch – who the character was named after – have cameos. You might hear the voice of Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider in there. And stunt coordinator Kane Hodder, who plays the homicidal Victor Crowley in the Hatchet movies, appears as a resort employee named Cody.
BACKGROUND: Most filmmakers probably would have shot Frozen in the safety of a stage. Put the actors on a chair that looks like it’s high up, but is actually only a couple feet off the ground, hang a green screen behind it, surround it with some evergreen trees and fake snow, shoot the movie in comfort. But that wasn’t Green’s approach. He wanted to make Frozen out in the elements, feeling the audience would know if the setting was artificial, with the actors sitting on a lift chair that was really fifty feet off the ground. As Green has said, “It’s all shot practically. There is no sound stage, no green screen, no CGI. The actors are all actually in the air. The weather is real. All the things that threaten them are real.” Of course, this made the production incredibly challenging.
Although set on the fictional Mount Holliston in Vermont, Frozen was filmed at the Snow Basin Ski Resort in Ogden, Utah during the coldest time of year. Green rode the ski lift looking for the perfect spot to have Dan, Lynch, and Parker get stranded. And when the lift reached that point, he suddenly blurted out, “This is where they die!” Not “This is where they get stuck” or “This is where we should shoot the movie”. “This is where they die”… and he couldn’t even tell you why he said that. But he did, and as soon as the words were out of his mouth, the lift stopped. It started moving again after a few minutes, but for a little while Green was stuck in the same spot where he was going to stick his characters. And his actors.
To shoot in this spot, Green and his cast and crew had to contend with snowfall, sixty mile per hour winds, wind chill that dropped as low as thirty degrees below zero, and long rides on the ski lift. The people and the equipment had to be moved to the location on snowmobiles and snowcats, a quarter mile journey up the mountain. Scenes of the cast members sitting on the stationary chair were shot with a crane. For scenes where the chair is moving, a camera couldn’t be placed on the chair with the actors, and the next chair down the line was too far away for the camera to be placed on that. So a bucket contraption was hung from the cable between the two chairs for Green and cinematographer Will Barratt to ride in with the camera. Then there was the issue of the wolves. As Green told The Harvard Crimson, “All the wolves are real. We had six weeks of training with a pack of wolves with the wolf man. This was the same wolf man who trained the wolves in Dances with Wolves. They are wild animals. They are unpredictable. At any moment, they could snap.” Thankfully, there were no problems with the wolves. And for one moment where we actually see a wolf take a character down, a border collie was used as a stand-in for the wolf.
The Frozen filming conditions were so uncomfortable, it wouldn’t be surprising if someone were to question if the movie was worth the trouble. But the experience Green had when the film made its debut at the Sundance festival proved that it was. All five screenings of Frozen were sold out within forty-eight hours of tickets going on sale. There was a wait list of people hoping to get in anyway. An audience member fainted during the first screening. Two viewers vomited during the second screening. At all five screenings, people said they had to step outside because the movie was so intense. It was a very promising start for the film… but sadly, it didn’t get much of a release after that.
At its widest release in North America, Frozen was only showing at one hundred and six theatres. So it had an opening weekend of just over one hundred thousand dollars and sputtered out from there. Thankfully, the worldwide totals were able to boost the numbers a bit. But Frozen only made a total of two-point-seven million at the box office. The reviews were decent, but it just didn’t reach enough of an audience. Distributor Anchor Bay then gave it a special edition release on DVD and Blu-ray that was packed with featurettes and commentaries. Sadly, the movie never caught on with genre fans the way Hatchet did. Thirteen years after its release, it still doesn’t have as large of a following as it deserves. And Disney’s Frozen was so huge, few remember a movie had the same title just a few years earlier. It’s a shame this Frozen has faded from memories, because it might just be the best movie Adam Green has made to date.
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: It starts with the foundation of a solid script. This is a very dialogue-driven movie, with a lot of time spent on conversations between the three leads. At first it’s just fun, everyday life banter. This gives us a chance to get to know Dan, Lynch, and Parker. To understand what’s going on with each one of them. To start liking them. Then, just twenty-two minutes into the film’s ninety-three minute running time, the chair lift they’re on stops moving. Up to that point, Frozen has been a buddy skiing movie where either the girlfriend who joined two friends on their ski trip is the third wheel. Or her presence has made Lynch the third wheel on the sort of ski trip he has previously enjoyed with Dan. When it was just the two of them. When the lift stops, the movie shifts fully into survival thriller mode. But there’s still a lot of exceptionally well-written dialogue. As the characters have to try to talk their way through the situation they’re in. And occasionally take a break for chit-chat to try to distract themselves from the terror they feel.
Green found the perfect three actors to speak his dialogue and bring the characters to life. A lot of actors showed up to audition for Frozen. And when they found out what the filming conditions were going to be like, seventy percent of them took themselves out of the running. Of the remaining thirty percent, Zegers, Ashmore, and Bell were the right choices to go with. And Green said that not only were they willing to work in the elements, they were even excited to do it. All three of them delivered great performances out there in the cold and snow. They made their characters completely believable. And were really able to sell the fear and desperation their characters feel.
Frozen is also effective because Green dropped his characters into a scary but relatable situation. Of course, the scenario will connect most with viewers who have actually been to ski resorts and ridden on the chair lifts. As Green has said, “I think anyone who has ever been skiing has had that fear. That chair lift always, undoubtedly stops for some reason, usually because somebody fell getting on or off of it. But there’s this collective fear of everyone on the chair lift wondering ‘If the lift doesn’t start again, how are we going to get down?’”
But even if you’ve never been to a ski resort, even if you’ll never find yourself on a chair lift, you can still imagine what it would be like to be stuck fifty feet off the ground in brutal weather conditions. And while you watch the film’s characters try to figure out how to survive… the viewer also starts pondering what they would do in the situation. Sure, some people might imagine themselves becoming Spider-Man and getting out of the predicament with ease. But Green does a good job of showing it wouldn’t be so easy to get out of the chair safely. What can you do? Jump off the chair and hope the fifty foot fall won’t be so bad? Try to climb the cable? Green shows the danger of every option. And while Frozen is a very different sort of movie than Hatchet, the fact that Green also made Hatchet gives this one an extra edge. Because we don’t want to see Dan, Lynch, and Parker get hurt too badly, and we know Green isn’t afraid of messing his characters up.
BEST SCENE(S): Terrible things do happen in Frozen. But the best moments come in between the bursts of shock and horror. They’re the character moments that are perfectly played by the cast. The moments when we see the doomed trio banter with each other. When we watch Parker and Lynch finally start to bond, under awful circumstances. When we listen to Lynch reminisce about a humiliating experience. Or see how worried Parker is about the dog waiting for her at home.
PARTING SHOT: Frozen is a great survival thriller with wonderful dramatic moments. The Hatchet movies are fun and we would be glad to see that franchise go on forever. But between the Victor Crowley killing sprees, the genre would greatly benefit from Adam Green making more movies along the lines of Frozen. More grounded, relatable films about interesting characters dealing with terrifying situations. Green did such an awesome job with this one, we’re left wanting to see him craft some more legitimately unnerving thrillers. In the meantime, more viewers need to seek out Green’s Frozen and give the film a chance. It deserves to be seen by more people. To be referenced more often. To have a much larger fan following than it has.
If you’re still not sold on Frozen, here’s one last quote from Adam Green that might seal the deal. Speaking with Screen Rant, the filmmaker described Frozen as “a horror movie that will scare and disturb audiences not with the typical conventions of violence, gore, or torture… but in the overall sense of dread that keeps reminding you ‘this could really happen.’ Even those who have never skied will be able to relate to the fear of heights and fear of freezing to death that this film will terrify the audience with.” Now, doesn’t that sound like the ideal viewing experience?
A couple previous episodes of the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw series can be seen below. To see more, and to check out some of our other shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
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