The magic of Frozen is that there's no badguy. It's just humans against nature. I was worried at first that the film would be slow paced. I mean, how many things can happen within such a small space?
It turns out: plenty. Although time passes during the movie, the film does not give in to drawn out melodramatic sequences. They fight against nature, but the film is structured to attack them from all sides at once, but also in a way that's not transparently unrealistic. (Although personally I feel that nobody would have survived the cold and dehydration of the first night.)
We even learn a little about the characters, in a way that's more convincing than most disaster films, I am thinking for example of The Poseidon Adventure. There are no stereotypes here.
And they make mistakes. This isn't like Die Hard where the protagonist cleverly thinks of everything. Everything about the film, including their being trapped up so high, falls together like a series of coincidences, and that makes it even more horrific, because you start to believe that it might actually happen. There's even a little comedy to offset the horror, towards the beginning.
There is some gore in the film, but hugely less than I was led to believe. This is no Quentin Tarantino film and no slasher film either.
So having said what it's not, what is it? It's a thrilling look at how, even though we humans have extended ourselves into nature with technology, how reliant we are on that technology. It's an intellectual thriller rather than a supernatural or a serial killer freakshow thriller. It's normal people without heroic powers stuck in a situation that is near to real, the "Lost in Translation" of horror films.
I though it was fantastic. I'll give Frozen a 9 out of 10.
It turns out: plenty. Although time passes during the movie, the film does not give in to drawn out melodramatic sequences. They fight against nature, but the film is structured to attack them from all sides at once, but also in a way that's not transparently unrealistic. (Although personally I feel that nobody would have survived the cold and dehydration of the first night.)
We even learn a little about the characters, in a way that's more convincing than most disaster films, I am thinking for example of The Poseidon Adventure. There are no stereotypes here.
And they make mistakes. This isn't like Die Hard where the protagonist cleverly thinks of everything. Everything about the film, including their being trapped up so high, falls together like a series of coincidences, and that makes it even more horrific, because you start to believe that it might actually happen. There's even a little comedy to offset the horror, towards the beginning.
There is some gore in the film, but hugely less than I was led to believe. This is no Quentin Tarantino film and no slasher film either.
So having said what it's not, what is it? It's a thrilling look at how, even though we humans have extended ourselves into nature with technology, how reliant we are on that technology. It's an intellectual thriller rather than a supernatural or a serial killer freakshow thriller. It's normal people without heroic powers stuck in a situation that is near to real, the "Lost in Translation" of horror films.
I though it was fantastic. I'll give Frozen a 9 out of 10.