426: Frozen (2010)

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Everyone needs someone that can tightrope.

SPEAKER_02 0:06

The utility of your friends cannot be underestimated. Four years after Adam Green introduced the world to Victor Crowley and Hatchet, he took horror fans on a psychological horror story Up the Mountain and Into the Cold. The production filmed on location at Snowbasin Resort in Utah in early 2009 with John Ashmore, Kevin Deggers, and even Emma Bell in one of her earliest roles. The film follows three friends who talk their way onto a final ride up the slopes before the resort shuts down for the week. When the lights go off and the chair lifts stops with them still on it, they're suspended high off the ground and forced to make life or death choices. This week we're talking about the 2010 film Frozen. Greetings and salutations, and welcome to Hacker Slash. If you're joining us again, welcome back. Can you guys smell that fresh mountain air? If this is your first time listening, welcome to the party. We are a horror movie review podcast dedicated to telling you whether a movie is a hack.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

A total joke? A waste of time.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Or a slash.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Totally killer, pun intended.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

We believe horror is for everyone, and as such, we're rating these movies with the perspective we've gained from our varying walks of life and the flavors of fear we fancy most. My name is Chris. I'm your friendly neighborhood slasher enthusiast. This week I'm joined by the classic horror connoisseur, Sean.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Have you ever smelled your floss?

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Oh, obviously, this week we're kicking off 2026 with the cold embrace of winter.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

That's right. And if you support the show, you'll also get to hear our B-side at the end of this episode where we get into what we might do in this fucked-up situation.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

And speaking of fucked-up situation, Sean, is this a fucked up situation that you had seen before?

SPEAKER_01 1:59

You know, I really wanted to say that I have, and I feel like I might have watched it a long time ago. When we first mentioned we were doing Frozen, I was like, frozen? My mind, everyone's mind probably goes to the Disney movie. You know what I'm saying? But when I put this on and I saw familiar faces, and maybe it's because I've seen a couple of mountain movies, a couple of, you know, human versus nature kind of antagonist things, it just felt like something I had seen before, but I really didn't remember anything about it. It just felt familiar.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

Yeah, stop me if you've seen a movie where you have a small group of individuals trapped and isolated in a precarious circumstance and they're fighting to survive.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

It's rare. It's rare.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

I know, it's really innovative stuff. But I will say that this was a creature comfort for me, not because I've ever paid very much attention to this movie, but because it is consistently recommended to me on Tubi and thinking, okay, I just want to disconnect and just have something on in the background. This is it. And I gotta tell you, while I had passive entertainment with this movie in the past, this time around, I felt like I was looking at it with fresh eyes, and I felt like I was watching it for the first time because I stopped to actually clock the faces. There are so many people in this movie that I know from so many different things, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:29

It's true. There's a lot of familiar faces in this movie.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Yeah, obviously, we have Kane Hotter. We have Sean Ashmore, who I have seen in a few different things, but mostly like the rookie. We also have Kevin Zeggers, who's also in The Rookie, but he's he's like an FBI agent in that show. Then we have Emma Bell, who was in The Walking Dead. Actually, Kevin Zeggers was in The Fear of the Walking Dead. She was in The Walking Dead, and then soon after this movie, she was in Final Destination.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Wild. A lot of faces, a lot of faces. But yeah, I think going into this one, it despite it feeling familiar, and as the movie progressed, I just, you know, I didn't remember anything at all. I just didn't remember any of the events. This is one of those movies where I feel like you find yourself kind of wondering, what would you do in this position? You know, and I found myself getting upset at some of the decisions that were being made by some of the characters in this movie, and then really thinking of what I would do in that scenario. And I think that that's part of the fun in this type of movie in particular. This movie was, it's just filled with so many cringy moments and bad decisions, I feel like.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Sean, I have told on this podcast a few times now the tale of me being stuck on a mountain in Iceland in the middle of winter in Iceland with like no GPS, no self-service, barely any gas in the car, and the immense strain that that put on the friendship I had with the person that I went with at the time. It gets rough. When you put yourself in a life or death situation with someone, no matter how much you like them, things get rough. And this movie perfectly captures the feeling of that. Now, when impressed, I think there was a couple moments in here character-wise where I was like, oh my god, I know who I would toss off the chairlift immediately. But this really did evoke a lot of those feelings of damn, what a terrible position. Also, damn, I think we could have made better decisions. And then also the third damn, the lawsuit that inevitably is gonna come from this scenario.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Oh yeah, for sure. If you're not rich after this, man, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

Sean, have you seen Hatchet 2?

SPEAKER_01 5:54

I don't think I've seen the second one, no.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

Well, I have good news for you. Not only is Danielle Harris in Hatchet 2, which is the reason why I ever watched Hatchet 2 after we did the original Hatchet, but in Hatchet 2, there is a scene that serves as an epilogue to this movie, and it is revealed that there was a massive lawsuit because of the events of this film, and it's so satisfying.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

That's great. That's great. I mean, you might as well get paid out because Jesus Christ. Terrible.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

If you're getting stuck on a chairlift and you don't get what you're owed, I mean, what the hell are all these lawyers doing these TV commercials for?

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Oh, a hundred percent. And listen, it doesn't matter how you get stuck on a ski lift, right? Like if you're just getting stuck, whether it's on purpose or not, no way. And sub-zero temperatures, no way. I will say though, one of the things that surprised me a little bit about this movie is that I did not think, I did not think that going into this one, that it was gonna be very interesting. And it's because of of what we just talked about earlier, about the fact that we've seen a number of scenarios where people get stuck or stranded in the wilderness, and it's almost always in the winter because why the fuck not would you get stuck somewhere where you have to survive in extreme temperatures, right? It's never like it's very rarely like hot, hot weather, like the desert. And that happens. We've seen the stranded in a desert type of thing, but these mountain movies, you know, whether you're scaling a mountain, stuck on a mountain, plane crashes on a mountain, you get stuck in a ski lift, right? I just didn't think that this was going to be very interesting. But, you know, there is something about the simplicity of it. And I think it's the realism, the restraint. I think it's less about the thrills and more about the realism of the moments, just like you were saying, Chris, right? It's like it it perfectly depicts how you might deal with a scenario like this trying to survive with some people that you know, maybe people that you don't know as well.

SPEAKER_02 8:04

I cannot wait to get into the spoiler zone because I really want to unpack the decision making in this movie for sure. But it is a fun time. And it's a fun time while being a surprisingly earnest time. One of the things that really stood out to me, and why I feel like I almost didn't do this movie justice the first several times I watched it, is how well acted it is. Not only, of course, is this cast absolutely stacked, but apart from one character that I do truly find um borderline insufferable, I still think that role was played well. They evoked what wasn't their what their character was intended to evoke from us as an audience, and I I can appreciate that. There's also moments in this where we have even just dialogue between them, and they're grappling not only with the reality of where they are, but a lot of the consideration to what will come of this, what happens if we don't make it home. And that was surprisingly emotional. I'm not saying I cried, but it was deeper than I think we typically get in movies like this.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

I 100% agree. I think they depicted those moments very well. There were some really, yeah, you could say emotional moments. There's one that really I think got me, and we'll get to it. I didn't cry either. I don't cry that much in movies, or if at all, I don't know. I'm trying to think of a movie that actually brought tears to my eyes. But skin a marink. It was skin a marink. No, but yeah, there was some there was some dialogue in this movie that you just kind of got invested in a little bit, and that's I think another aspect of what is surprising about a movie as simple as this movie actually is.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

It is surprising, it is simple, but it also isn't scary. We can be honest about that, right? This is one of those movies that's a survival story, and it's very much like, damn, sucks to suck. I don't want to be in that situation, I don't want to be dating these people. But aside from that, there isn't a lot in this movie, and maybe actually this is a small bit of a disappointment. There isn't a lot in this movie that scares me in the way of it being a horror movie. This is more man versus nature, man versus elements. You know what I mean? It's that kind of perspective, or just the psychological toll of also being stuck in this situation, but there isn't a lot in here where I felt necessarily thrilled.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Yeah, it's for sure not scary, it's cringy. Like it, there's definitely moments, there's a handful of moments throughout this film that that I think are really cringy. There are moments that the film it it gets you to react. And I think if you can react to a moment that kind of translates to what we kind of want to get out of uh a horror movie. And I sat there watching this movie and then reflecting on this movie and thinking, like, is this truly a horror movie? And are these types of movies truly horror movies? You know, because I think when you think of horror movies, you immediately go to supernatural, you go to slashers, you go to monster movies, things like that, right? And you don't necessarily always think of survival. Survival horror is the subgenre. I don't know, survival horror, nature as the antagonist, things like that. It just doesn't necessarily maybe it's a thriller, but yeah, I I think when you think of the the moments that happen in this movie, I guess you can translate it to horror, but it's not scary. It's not scary in the traditional sense. It's the cringy moments that make you yell out and react to what's happening, yelling at the characters to stop doing what they're doing. Those are moments that translate to horror, you know?

SPEAKER_02 11:57

For sure, it translates, but I think what is interesting about this is it still doesn't feel like the most horrific survival story. I'll have to look back on the catalog of these kind of scenarios that we've seen in horror, but it feels different in a simplicity, but also roughly roughly the same on paper. Like I mentioned in the beginning of the episode, stop me if you've heard of this film, where a small group of people are confined in a precarious circumstance, right? But that is one of the things that I struggle with because there is something about it that I can give it credit to. I think just because of how well executed it is.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

That's interesting. So I can't speak for watching it multiple times, but yeah, I think it's it's it's just very interesting. It's no descent, you know what I mean? I think of like descent is definitely survival in a sense, like you're trying to escape the cave, but you also have creepy ass little monster goblins coming for you. So there's it's not the descent, but and they're not eating each other, you know. That's I'm sorry, spoiler, they're not eating each other, folks.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

So it's not the descent because it's the ascent, it's the ascent, as Miley Cyrus said, it's the climb.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Oh my goodness. It's interesting, it's interesting. But the idea, I think, of being trapped in a dangerous location, that fight for survival, it it's what we're talking about. It's nothing new. It's nature being the antagonist. We've definitely seen that before. We've seen it in a number of different scenarios. But to your point, Chris, the execution that you know, to you gets better every time you watch it, or maybe that's the reason why it gets better every time you watch it, I think it's the execution in this film where it finds itself and it makes for a pretty entertaining movie to watch. So even though it's a very familiar backdrop, it's a very familiar scenario, it's not something we haven't necessarily seen before. The execution of how it's done feels different than some of the other survival horror movies, I guess you could say.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

I love that you said it feels different, but I actually want to tone in on a different kind of different, and that is me feeling indifferent about this ending. I feel like once we get further into this movie and things start to wrap themselves up, it almost feels anticlimactic, which feels wild to say considering on paper what happens in this movie to a lot of these characters.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

I think the further this movie goes along, I think the more real it gets, though. I think it's very interesting in that regard. I I was I was actually ready for the bleakest of endings, but it didn't turn out to be completely depressing, you know. I was like literally sitting there with Ari, and we were like, what if this happens, you know?

SPEAKER_02 15:05

Yeah, and I think that's my struggle, Sean. It's because this movie is really interesting all the way up until the point that it ends, and I'm like, oh, we could have done better, we could have done better. I feel like we were building to something much better than this.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Yeah, we were definitely building to something better, and we didn't quite get there, but it is interesting. I don't know. I mean, do we want that? Do we want a really bleak ending? Do we want in this scenario for something wild to happen at the end, for someone to potentially not make it? You know what I mean? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

The answer is yes. Everyone must die I wanted specifically, but I can't wait to justify that when we get into our ratings. Now, before we get there, Sean, how would you describe the gore score?

SPEAKER_01 15:54

It's interesting because the gore in this movie is pretty low overall, but it's extremely effective when it does appear. It's that reaction that you get in those moments. Most of the film has no gore at all. It relies more on anticipation and realism than full frontal graphic imagery. There is, you know, you could say that there's some dismemberment, but it's it's shown tastefully. Some of the moments that it does give us make you flinch for sure. But overall, this one's getting a low gore score.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

And what about the animal report?

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Well, I can honestly say that there's not necessarily any harm to the animals in this movie, but I can't speak for the other way around. And then there's also a moment where we talk about animals that might pull on your heartstrings a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 16:50

In addition to that, there were some less than great things that transpired behind the scenes. I can't wait to get into the spoiler zone on that. But let's go ahead and get into our ratings. Frozen from 2010. Was it a hack or a slash?

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Well, listen, I think that this movie thrives on realism and restraint, like I said before. I think its biggest strength is most certainly the atmosphere, the silence, the wind, and the drop below the chairlift. I think all of those things do most of the heavy lifting. I think it creates this sort of lingering dread without the need to lean on cheap scares. And I like that when the gore occurs in this movie, it stands out and it makes you cringe. I do realize that restraint is also where the film may stumble a bit, though. Specifically, I think sometimes not necessarily with how the characters are acting or how the actors are depicting the characters, but because there is just there's not enough character development that you really truly invest in the characters themselves, I would say. And maybe that's something that changes as as the movie you watch it maybe more than once or something. But I didn't find myself sitting here like really caring if if one of these people survived, if one particular person survived. That part didn't matter to me as much. And I think if you're expecting these escalating set pieces or a more traditional horror payoff, it might not be the movie for you. But I think that the minimal score and the naturalistic performances help to sell the terror of being trapped in a situation like this. So it was an entertaining watch. I think this one earns its cut, not with a blade, but by letting hope freeze solid by snapping it in half and watching it fall. And I think that this one it deserves a slash. It was a fun watch.

SPEAKER_02 18:49

I am so glad you had fun with Ishawn. And hey, I really enjoyed this when I first watched it. Again, not from a place of passionate love, but more passive enjoyment, largely because it was just it was simple. It was an easy-to-watch movie and it didn't demand a lot from you. And I can respect a movie like that, that still executes itself well. Even though the setup is simple, the performances absolutely sell every single second of this movie. And that is something that I felt stronger about the more we go on, and the more I watch this movie. Because I've I sat here watching it this time and I was like, damn, you really believe these people. You really believe their fear, you believe the messiness between them, you believe the third wheeling, you believe the tension that's even at the beginning of this movie. And it makes what should be a very straight-up survival movie way more compelling. Even if I don't actually care about seeing them make it to the end, I could it's really interesting because I'm invested in them, but also I couldn't care less about them. They're expendable to me, but I I'm committed to the bit and seeing what happens to them specifically. But what really solidified this one for me was how real the tension in this movie feels before things even go wrong. And again, it's because of how well these roles are executed, because we see that there are cracks in the friendship that show up way before even the main conflict of the movie takes hold, and it boils over into this guilt, this panic, this blame, and even desperate problem solving that honestly makes things even worse. So I, as a 36-year-old now, who can look back on this and think about almost 10 years ago, the time that I was in a not identical situation by any means, but my own test of a friendship stranded in the middle of nowhere in winter. Yeah, this this movie fucking hits. It is fun and it's a slash. Now, with that, Frozen from 2010 has earned a universal slash. As we discussed, you can find this movie streaming a number of places online. So if you want to check it out, go check out the link in our show notes in the episode description below. And if you've already seen it, go ahead and go on to the second half of this episode so we can jump straight into that spoiler zone together. We'll see you in a bitch. Welcome back, folks. You're now entering the spoiler zone for Frozen, which has earned a universal splash. We have a lot to impact here, but before we get into the specifics of those ratings, let's go through the kills with John's Slay by Slay.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

One is the loneliest number. It's one because one survivor out of the three of these fucking idiots, and only two deaths, and pretty much these two people died the exact same way. You know, maybe the start of it was different, but yeah, we got two deaths in this movie, one survivor. There's not a whole lot to debate here, but let's get into them because I gotta know, Chris, what did you think about these two kills that we got? Did they give you the chills?

SPEAKER_02 24:05

I didn't get the chills, but I did get a little bit of the thrill because holy smokes. I love the fact that Dan suggests earlier in the movie that the worst way to die would be being eaten by a shark, only for him to be eaten by a pack of wolves.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:23

I love that. I do think what separates his death is how little of it you actually see because you hear so much more of it. And because of the performance that we get with Parker and Lynch, where Dan is really saying, Don't let her look, don't let her look. Lynch is holding on to her. And let's just really hold on to this for a moment because Lynch loves his friend enough to have to listen to him while shielding her from seeing or hearing her boyfriend be mauled. That is his loyalty to Dan. I'm sure he would have loved to not see or hear that, but he is suffering. And that's Sean Ashmore's acting. And I absolutely maybe he's really what makes this movie for me because I've come to enjoy him in the shows that I watch him in. But he really made this scene.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

It is that yeah, listen, you went deep on that scene for sure. And I get it. Like now that you you talk about it that way, yeah, you piece all that together. That's a it's a very intense moment for sure. And the problem that I had, and not necessarily that it the scene is bad by any means, it's just with the kills in general, is that you're getting two kills and we're just not we're not really seeing them. You know what I mean? We're getting the the emotional weight of the reactions and we're hearing some things, but we're not necessarily getting to see all of the action. And you know, sometimes you want a little bit of that action. You got a lot of really quick cuts of, you know, wolves scraping by, grabbing a bite or two here and there. And then when you get and then when you get to to Joe, right, like you don't actually you don't actually see the kill, you see the aftermath at the end on the way down the mountain, which I think that moment is harrowing for sure. But again, just wanted a little bit of the action.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

I'm gonna be very real with you, Sean. When I first saw this movie, I thought Joe didn't die. I thought she stumbled on Dan's body. I'm like, how lost did she get that she's just circling right back around to her dead boyfriend? That's kind of wild.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

They dragged his torso halfway down the mountain.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

Yeah, maybe. But I recognized the second time that I watched it, and again, this was years ago, I realized, oh wow, I really missed a very specific component here. I do want to acknowledge, though, for a moment, how terrible it is that we don't have more of a send-off for Lynch in particular, because I feel like we built up so much with him on that chair emotionally. So for him to go out and we don't see much more of it, for him to go out the way he does, period. Hated that. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

You want to know why that is? Please tell me. I'll tell you why that is. It's because this jackass did not deserve to get a proper send-off because his ass could have done what he did fucking eight hours ago. He listen, he did what he did after the aftermath of cutting his hands up in the same in the same motion, right? But somehow, however many some odd later hours later, this guy finally gets it, gets up there, he gets over, he spends like what seems like an eternity getting four inches away from the one that like the chair that he's on, and then once he gets like four inches past, he's all the way down to the to the pole that he's trying to get to super fast, and he gets down there. And listen, if they had just stuck to that plan from the get-go, I think everything would have been absolutely fine.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

You're not wrong.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

You're not so I'm not mad at him per per se. I don't, he's not a jackass. I'm just saying, did he deserve a better ending when he could have, you know, saved everyone a long time ago?

SPEAKER_02 28:14

So he shouldn't have been a little bitch, is what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Listen, I'm that's what I'm saying, I guess. That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Okay. I do want to at least acknowledge though that if you're gonna jump from this chair, I'm going back to Dan for a moment, you need to have such a controlled fall. You have to be very confident in what you're doing and not at the very least point both of your legs straight down while you're falling. That is clown behavior.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

If you jump off the roof of your house and land straight on your feet, it's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt. I've jumped off of roofs, it hurts. You can you can break an ankle, you can sprain an ankle, you can damage your foot. So, like, I don't know if we think that if we thought like the snow was gonna be soft and you were just gonna fucking sink into it or what have you. But yeah, that's what I thought too. As soon as he was going straight down, I was like, oh, this guy is dunzo. And listen, what would be the best way to fall? I have no idea. Do you just belly flop it? Do you do you try to land on your side, maybe break an arm? You know what I mean? That's better. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

Yeah, so here's what I was thinking. I was thinking the only way that you could do this. I'm gonna kind of clock this back in my brain. There's no way that I think you're doing this and coming out completely scot-free, but there's three of them up there. So we have that. He could dangle himself and then lower himself on one of their legs or something. You know what I mean? Like almost making like a human chain, just to reduce the distance from the ground.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

Or just try to fall on your ass. Yeah. Well, I mean, conveniently that that chair lift fell and reduced the distance to the ground, you know what I mean? And if that screw was so for her, yeah. That's another thing we need to talk about. Were these were these chairlifts that safe to begin with? Like they were breaking down the whole way up, right? Just randomly shutting down, going back on, and then now all of a sudden a screw just like pops out and gets loose. Like, what in the holy hell is going on on this ski resort? That's what I want to know. The slopes are not sloping right now.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Poor maintenance, poor communication, poor grounds.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Yeah, this place is toast for sure. This place is absolutely toast. They're getting they're gonna shut down, go bankrupt. It's a whole thing for sure. What I want to know though was what was with the missing poster in the beginning of the film. We get a moment in the film where they flash to a missing poster, like somebody's missing, some guy. And I'm like, that's an interesting choice to put in this movie, right? Like, I was waiting, because you know, missing poster doesn't necessarily mean you're you're dead, so he didn't he didn't make it on the the sleigh by sleigh.

SPEAKER_02 30:56

All right, you ready for this?

SPEAKER_01 30:57

Talk to me, talk to me.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

So the man on the missing poster is actually someone who used usually worked with Adam Green, but he couldn't do this movie because he was working on Halloween 2, Rob Zombies Halloween 2.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

Oh, that's hilarious.

SPEAKER_02 31:15

So it was his usual camera operator, so it's like, hey, this guy's MIA. So it's it's like a shout-out for him, but it's also like he's that's hilarious, actually.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

And you know, it probably like that just being a fun thing for them to do, but also maybe trying to add like some kind of touch of like I don't know, like shit goes down on this mountain sometimes, you know, that kind of vibe, that little eerie vibe. That's what kind of brings me to what I really enjoyed the most about this movie, and I think it was the location and the practical setting that they had, the chairlift, the mountain, all of that matched with that kind of absent score, very minimalistic score that adds this interesting touch to the film. There's these moments where everything just looks and sounds peaceful around them, but they're living in this personal hell. You know, they wake up in this morning and like the sun is rising, the birds are chirping. It's a beautiful outside, it's absolutely beautiful. The background of the mountain is just amazing to look at, right? But they're literally having the worst times of their lives, and the film was shot entirely practically. It had no sound stage, no green screen, no CGI, nothing. And the actors, the actresses that played these characters, they're truly literally sitting in a chairlift 50 feet in the air on the side of this mountain in Utah. And so, like that aspect of the film, I think, is why it's entertaining. It's just you feel it.

SPEAKER_02 32:53

It is so good, Sean. And actually, this whole environment, again, the danger of just being on a just a chair, like you're not in a gondola, right? You're not in like an enclosed space, you're just on a chair, absolutely not. It's giving fair ride.

SPEAKER_03 33:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:09

But also, Sean, can you sit here and look at this movie, especially knowing that our leading lady eventually stars in a final destination movie? How can you look at this and not think, damn, what a great Final Destination sequence can come of this scenario?

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Oh, yeah, for sure. This may have got her the part in Final Destination, you know what I mean? Who knows? You don't know.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

For sure. But one of the things that I absolutely loved, and thinking about just the pick yourself up by the bootstraps of it all, and the level of effort that goes in with a small team to make a movie like this to film on location, to know you're doing everything practically, but to also know that they could only afford to light the first four cable car towers. So they didn't have a lot of room to work with. But I'm even thinking about this shot where they're stopped, they're suspended, they're chatting, and then boom, boom, boom, all the lights start shutting off. What a terrible fucking feeling. I would lose it. I would absolutely lose it.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

That's the moment you know that no one gives a fuck. That's the moment you know that you're just done.

SPEAKER_02 34:25

Yeah, and their assertion that, oh no, no, no, there's cameras all over the place. There's no way they'd leave us here. You would think, but also no, people will find a way to mess up.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Uh, literally, these people were fighting about who can cover them to go take a piss or digging, you know, somebody's tossed-out cigarette pack out of the trash, and like, no, if you think these people are actually gonna do something correctly, you got another thing coming.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

100%. But this also goes to show how absolutely crucial effective communication is. Because the second this daisy chains down from one person to the next, all of a sudden you got people missing.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

It's so true. There's a lot of moments in this film that can be a little bit frustrating, but nothing is more frustrating than the moment that the one dude is driving up the mountain on the snowplow, and they take what seems to be forever to throw something down at this motherfucker only until he's backing up, where he's looking the opposite direction. They didn't think to throw one of their helmets or their skis into this dude's windshield at the right time. They had all this time in the world. Those things aren't fast. That guy wasn't driving fast. He's actually he parked for quite some time. That is one of the most frustrating moments in this entire film.

SPEAKER_02 35:52

Oh, I agree with you, Sean. That's actually the worst part of this movie for me. Although I love to see Kane Hodder, he's so great. Hi, hello. But the fact that they waited so long and then also B couldn't throw shit to save their life. All you had to do was angle it just a little bit further back. You have enough objects to throw.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

Yeah. Terrible. There was a lot of there was a lot of those moments that were just really, really frustrating. And man, I don't know. I don't know. But there's some there was there there's some good moments too, though. There's some good moments.

SPEAKER_02 36:26

Yeah. One of the moments that I absolutely loved was the morbid discussion about the worst ways to die.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

Well, yeah, for sure. That and it wasn't there was also levity in that though, because you've got like the the you've got Joe Lynch that's just literally saying, like, nah, that's not the worst way to die. Like every time, you know, just he is challenging everything.

SPEAKER_02 36:43

Yeah, the star like that.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Everyone has that friend.

SPEAKER_02 36:46

But having that kind of conversation to try to distract yourself from the moment, but also play into it, it's it's it's shitty, but also absolutely hilarious. One of my other favorite scenes, though, as much as I hated it, was Dan falling. Okay. And just the entire consequence of that. Because one, what an infuriating moment. And this is where I think it really sold me because there was this back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And I was just thinking about my own situation where I was trying to get my friend to fucking stay put, and he wanted to go either down the mountain or up the mountain, try to find cell phone service. I'm like, dude, it is winter, we're in a foreign country, we have zero resources, we're staying until daylight. Because if you fall, I can't carry you, I can't do any of this. So we need to reassess, and we had the benefit of being in a car, so like we could have kept ourselves semi-warm. This guy being so dead set on jumping, and then just the back and forth between them. I felt that in this movie, and I thought that was one again one of those moments that was spectacularly well acted.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

It was well acted for sure, and I I get it. Listen, I get it. When I when I first thought of how to get out of this situation, your first thought is always to just jump, right? You're like, come on, how high can it be? You know what I mean? It's not until you actually realize how high it is. Because I sat there watching this movie and I'm thinking, like, how high is this? You know, while they're still up there, Dan hadn't jumped yet. And I looked up, I'm like, okay, so how high is this ski lift? How high is this chair lift in this movie? And 50 feet, okay. And then I had to start looking up like, what can happen when you jump from 50 feet up? And there's a lot of things that can happen, as it turns out, when you jump from 50 feet up, not just broken limbs, but severe trauma. The depending on the way that you land, it could you could die. You could die. So it's definitely a dangerous jump. But yes, it was well acted. And I think even the aftermath, it's just when he lands, it's the sh that's the bones sticking out of his legs. Those are those cringy moments when you're yelling outside, you're like, oh my god, what the fuck were you thinking, man? Like, terrible, right? That's gotta hurt. You're feeling it. He's like leaning over to like grab the scarf or whatever he was picking up to try to do the tourniquet or whatever. And you feel that you feel him like he's doing a sit-up basically, and every time he does that, he's like touching or almost touching the bone that's sticking out of his leg, and it's like, ooh, you cringe every time you feel it.

SPEAKER_02 39:21

Absolutely terrible. But now I'm thinking, Sean, when you get onto these lifts, we're gonna ignore the movie for a moment, but in theory, when you get onto these lifts, you have your skis or your snowboard with you, yeah. Yes, okay, hear me out. Absolute shenanigans. This is not a reasonable solution, but could you not, since it's lifting up at a slope, could you not just have your skis on, dangle yourself, and then kind of swing and see if you could fall, but at least fall and land on your no, this is absolutely fucking terrible. It's a terrible idea. There's no good solution here.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

Swing far enough to like go like go down with the mountain until you get closer to the ground as you're on your way down. Yep. Like the whole physics of it. Maybe you'd have to have really strong, like you'd have to have a really strong swing, you know, like really get some momentum, like you're in a swing set, you know, and you used to just keep getting momentum until you could like almost go up like around, or you know what I mean? Like flip yourself over.

SPEAKER_02 40:22

Yeah, you would for sure need that. I've played too many dumb mobile games where you have to try to calculate the stupid physics of something that is entirely unrealistic. But I'm saying is this man could have had a better plan.

SPEAKER_01 40:35

Definitely they could have thought it out, and that's and that's kind of what you know, that's what I was talking about. If they had all just like sat still for a moment, right, and just really thought this out, you know, it wasn't until after Dan jumped that Joe decided that he can maybe latch onto the wire above them. But if they had if they had really thought of doing that beforehand, you know what I mean? I think that would have been great. If if they had done that beforehand, odds are that the chair lift would have started breaking, and with the extra weight, odds are that that thing probably would have snapped earlier. And I mean, there's a a better chance of that thing just hanging there, enough for you to hang down and and get down, you know, creating less distance to the ground. Also, listen, Dan, maybe you could have really shown your love and you could have had you could have had your girlfriend on your back and you could have just jumped and you could have taken the fall for her, and then she could have gotten down a lot sooner. Man, there's a lot if you were, you know, if you're gonna die, you could have gone down that way.

SPEAKER_02 41:42

I 100% agree. I'm actually gonna draw a diagram because now I have a thought. This might not be a good thought, and maybe I'm imagining that there's m too much of a slope. Okay, so Sean. Here we have here we have this the chair, the iron wire cable thing, the towers. They have a ski.

SPEAKER_01 42:06

Why couldn't they not hold the ski above almost like oh my god, we could literally yes, you could literally double seven that shit all the way down, man.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

Like that is that is that a viable option, probably not. Would I be able to do it? Absolutely not. But these people are way more athletic than I am, and two of these people do this shit all the time.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

Well, listen, it's definitely it it could work. I mean, you'd have to think of like can you can your wingspan hold on to both sides and you have to get that above and you gotta slide down? It pa it's possible, but then it's gonna be literally like a cartoon because you're gonna go fast. You're gonna go fast down that slope on that on the the line, and you're gonna go like body first right into the pole. It's gonna be just like a cartoon.

SPEAKER_02 42:57

Or until the next or the next car. Small little gas.

SPEAKER_01 43:02

But then you you what about you'll you lose the ski at some point? Like you can't keep the ski with you, I don't think.

SPEAKER_02 43:09

Maybe not, maybe not, but it at least cuts down the distance that you're having to like hand grab this. Everybody's, I'm sure, listening to this thinking, like, no, you idiots, this would never be possible. I also think that I'm imagining there to be more of a slope than there actually is. I'm sure that slope is very gradual over time, so you probably couldn't get the exact like down angle to slide.

SPEAKER_01 43:33

Maybe not, maybe not. What we really needed here, what we really needed here was somebody that could tightrope.

SPEAKER_02 43:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:41

That's what we needed. Somebody that can hop up there with some really great balance and just walk down. And just walk down to the next pole. You're easy, you're good.

SPEAKER_02 43:50

Okay, you know how when you play Dungeons and Dragons or any kind of RPG, how you have to build a party. When you have a Pokemon team, you have to build your Your team, your roster. You need to have a niche friend who can tightrope.

SPEAKER_01 44:05

Everyone needs someone that can tightrope.

SPEAKER_02 44:07

The utility of your friends cannot be underestimated.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

You gotta think of this shit, guys. You gotta think of it.

SPEAKER_02 44:15

100%. And I I do wish that there were better options for these folks. Believe me. I do still feel terribly that Dan had to be consumed the way that he was. But one of the things that really stands out to me is again the dynamic between all of them. For Lynch and for Dan in particular, to think about lifelong friends and then to think about this back and forth that they have when Parker's trying to negotiate for them to get onto the lift. And Lynch is calling out Dan for not spending more than 10 minutes watching football and how he never comes around anymore because he has a girlfriend. I absolutely loved seeing their dynamic play out in this movie.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

Yeah, it was a good dynamic. I think they all played the part super well. Joe playing the third wheel, but also having that almost, you know, best friend jealousy of when your best friend gets that girlfriend, and then all of the attention goes into that relationship. I think we've all probably felt that on one end of the fence or the other at some point in our lives and our youth and our upbringing, whatever it is. And I think that they played that scenario out pretty well for sure. And it's not even just that dynamic, but even when Parker as a character is going off on the slope or on the chairlift, and one of the best moments, too, but what a great moment for her character is just going off about her dog being home alone. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 45:45

Oh my gosh, Sean, that absolutely wrecked me. I don't know how that moment was completely lost on me, actually. No, I do know. I do know because I don't like Parker very much, and I have never been able to really stand her. Not that I disagree with the circumstance she is in. Like I feel for her. She got brought onto this trip. Her boyfriend was like, oh no, he won't mind. She was led to believe that it was a whole thing. You have to deal and contend with the feeling of not being wanted. But her and Dan's relationship, I didn't love. I didn't feel the chemistry between them. And her panicking, while I understand is reasonable, also just would absolutely drive me bananas in this situation.

SPEAKER_01 46:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:31

But all that aside, her talking about her puppy, and her puppy just thinking that she was abandoned and then starving to death, etc. And then Lynch having to be like, no, someone's gonna hear it, it's gonna keep barking, the neighbors in the in the landlord will just bust down the door, etc. Oh, Sean. That never really thought.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

That whole segment was just perfectly played out because it really hit home. It hit home when you're like, it was just the description, the really detailed description of like waiting. The dog is just gonna be waiting for me. Every little sound, they're gonna be lifting their head up or tilting their head, thinking that it could be me walking through the door, only to be let down that it isn't me, and then just that aspect of it was bad, let alone the starving to death possibility. It's the it's the moments where your dog, your best friend, right, is waiting for you and nothing happens. Just the thought of that, it breaks your heart.

SPEAKER_02 47:35

Have you ever thought about that?

SPEAKER_01 47:36

I've thought about it, yeah. And I've seen stories about it too. Like people post about it, like I've seen some really tragic stories of you know, like a dog's owner has died or whatever, and like the what what how does the dog feel that that their owner for years and years and years never comes home? You know what I mean? It's so sad.

SPEAKER_02 47:56

Absolutely gut-wrenching. I hate it so much. I do think about it every time I think I'm about to get rear-ended on my way home from work, and now I live alone. I'm like, oh my god, my dog, my cat.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

My dog, my cat. Yeah, it's rough.

SPEAKER_02 48:09

That'll be fine. Let's be fine, let's be real. But Jin, Jin needs me. Jin needs me. She's a social creature, and this is one of those moments that rape that really made me think, damn, I have underappreciated, I have undersold this movie. It needs more attention and it it deserved more than the time that I was giving it in the past.

SPEAKER_01 48:31

It's true. It's those little moments that, and maybe if you've seen it and it's been a while, watch it again. But it's these little moments that really elevate the movie and make it just that much better. But also thinking of, you know, even one of your one of the scenes you called out with, you know, Kevin Zeggers or or Dan jumping, you know, that whole scene, but the aftermath of it when he actually dies, right? The scene where the wolves are swarming around him, thinking of like what this what this movie was all about behind the scenes. This dude didn't use a stunt double. He literally had situations where the wolves were getting too close for comfort. The the trainers of these wolves during the filmmaking had to pull the wolves away, the filming had to stop. It's just it's wild. You can even see a few moments where the where there's this black wolf in the movie that actually walks right up to Kevin's face as he's trying to look away for help from the crew. So, like, there was some real shit going on in this movie.

SPEAKER_02 49:36

There was, there was, and I was really intrigued by how they even used, I believe, a border collie to do one of the bite shots.

SPEAKER_01 49:45

Yeah, border collie. That's great.

SPEAKER_02 49:48

What a good dog, what a fucking great dog.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

It's great, it's great. Oh man.

SPEAKER_02 49:55

You know, the other side of that border collie situation, though, is actually really sad because apparently there was a German Shepherd who was trained to do the stunt, but died two nights before they shot the scene.

SPEAKER_01 50:08

Dang.

SPEAKER_02 50:08

I know that's what we're talking about with the animal report. There's some fucked up shit happening in the backyard.

SPEAKER_01 50:12

That is messed up. So they they had the German Shepherd that was supposed to play the part, then they had to get the backup stunt double the border collie.

SPEAKER_02 50:22

It was a good dog though.

SPEAKER_01 50:23

Hey, the border collie pulled through. You know, it all worked out in the end, but RAP to the German Shepherd, that sucks.

SPEAKER_02 50:30

Mm-hmm. Now, that might be one of the saddest parts of this movie, knowing that there was a dog that passed away during production. But when we think about the worst parts of this movie, I want to give a shout out to something that is not worst in the sense of wow, this was dumb. I hate this was in the movie, this weakens the movie. No, no, no, no. I want to slide in something here that I thought was gross, like the cringiest part of the movie in an effective way, which was the hand being frozen to the safety bar. Imagine, Sean, that you are having such a day that you have to peel the flesh off of your frozen hand from a safety bar, touch your frostbite, and piss yourself and your boyfriend.

SPEAKER_01 51:21

All in the all in a 24-hour period.

SPEAKER_02 51:24

Uh oh no, the frostbite, the piss pants, and the frostb and the and the frozen hand, that'll happen with the same temperature.

SPEAKER_01 51:32

Yes, that'll happen pretty pretty quickly all at the same time. But yeah, not a great time. Not a great time. One of the one of the cringiest parts of the film for sure, watching her peel her hand off of the rail, it was wild. But that I would say is karma because if her dumbass didn't decide that after she was frantically freaking out about being stuck on the chairlift and decide that she needed to take her glove off so that she could smoke a cigarette to calm herself down and drop her glove, she wouldn't have been in that situation. So, you know, it sucks to suck.

SPEAKER_02 52:14

I also love though how Lynch didn't give a fuck. So he woke up, he looked over, and I know that she was kind of hiding her hand, but also you could absolutely see skin on the bar. He knows what happened.

SPEAKER_01 52:30

Which I think is also hilarious that later on in the film there's no flesh on the bar, the flesh is just gone, like maybe the it flaked off, you know, frozen flies flaked off or something. Her hand looks remarkably better throughout the rest of the film.

SPEAKER_02 52:46

So I incredible flesh flakes.

SPEAKER_01 52:48

Flesh flakes. It was interesting. But when you think of the reasons that all this shit happened, really the worst part for me was some of the dumb decisions that were made in this movie. And you know, it's just a fun worst part of the movie because I don't necessarily think there's like a terrible aspect to the film, but I do think the worst part would be the fact that a lot of the things they faced could have been avoided by really strategizing just a little bit better.

SPEAKER_02 53:13

Yeah, a lot of what they had could have been avoided by paying full price for their ticket and being properly accounted for on the slopes.

SPEAKER_01 53:21

Yeah, that is also true. Look at that.

SPEAKER_02 53:23

Could have been avoided by better communication between all parties involved. How devastating it was that there was also another group of three skiers at the bottom. Again, unspecific, imprecise language strikes again. Liability.

SPEAKER_01 53:41

Communication breakdown. It's always the same. But listen, you've seen this movie uh uh a couple few times now over the years. I think this is one of those movies that I wouldn't mind watching it again. I don't know that it's something I would necessarily go out of my way to throw on unless I was like just really in the mood for that specific type of movie, but it's definitely a movie that I think is re-watchable.

SPEAKER_02 54:05

I'm gonna encourage you to re-watch it, and then I'm gonna encourage you to watch Hatchet 2 right after. Because the next time I watch this movie, it will be because of that specifically. I watched Frozen multiple times before I ever saw Hatchet 2. So when I saw Hatchet 2, I was like, oh, oh I love that. But now I want to really put it all together. Now I also can't wait to see if your appreciation of a Hatchet 2, if watching that and seeing the epilogue and seeing how things end for Parker ends up swaying your opinion on the movie, or if you think that there's more ground that can be covered within that universe of movies. But for now, there you have it, folks. Frozen has earned a universal slash. Now we've certainly had a robust discussion here, but the conversation about this movie doesn't end here by any means.

SPEAKER_01 54:55

Yeah, if you want to find out what's at the bottom of our ski slope and go further than this episode, consider supporting the show and visit patreon.com/slash hackerslash because this is where you can enjoy even more of the show, including bonus content with early access, extended episodes, movie nominations, and live shows. You don't get to make my life suck.