Keven Takes on: FROZEN

If you are a skier than you've thought about this film's premise multiple times. Different scenarios running through your head whenever that freaking chairlift stops to a halt halfway up the mountain. This is a movie that was made to honor those scenarios in horrifying fashion.

Frozen is a film directed by Adam Green - that's the guy who made those ridiculous Hatchet flicks. I had no idea he had anything to do with this film until the credits rolled. I have to say I'm impressed he can put together such a solid thriller without resorting to gore-cheese. Frozen stars the kid from the Air Bud franchise and Gossip Girl fame, Ice-man and a chick about to get her zombie on in The Walking Dead. Together they are hilarious and their hair is amazing and no I'm just kidding. But seriously, Kevin Zegers, Shawn Ashmore and Emma Bell have great chemistry. Thank god they do, since you will spend most of the film watching them swear and cry on a chairlift. Ashmore especially impresses me since I thought he was kind of a douche from the X-Men flicks, but he shows amazing range here and actually made me believe his emotional distress from the thought of freezing to death, or falling to death, or getting eaten to death.

The movie is about a trio of friends that decide to go for one last run on their little ski-trip, but are accidentally left hanging, literally, when the ski resort staff act like lazy pricks and check out for the day, leaving them stranded halfway up a mountain and ascended in the air at quite the height. Why don't they just wait it out you ask? The ski-mountain is only open on weekends and it just happens to be Sunday that they get stuck. That's when things get hilarious - I mean absolutely awful and intense. But in a good way.

How does one make a movie about three people stuck on a chairlift exciting? Great writing, solid acting and suspense up the wazoo. I was flipping out nonstop wondering what would happen next. Everything unwinds at a great pace and there is one scene in particular with a pack of wolves that was near traumatic to watch. That's not only a tip of the hat to our great young actors, but the direction is rocksolid as well. Green could have amped up that stupid gore-cheese like his Hatchet flicks, but instead he ops to kill us with intensity. It works and it works better than the last 17 Saw films ever could have imagined.

If you're a skier, you should be renting this movie right now. If you aren't a skier, you should be renting this film right now and watching it anyway. Frozen is a shining gem of a little movie that makes me happy to see that originality isn't completely dead right now in the horror world.