First, I want to apologize for the lack of posts lately. The laptop has been suffering some major issues and so I’ve been without a full-time computer for about a week now, but a new one has been procured, so we should be getting back on track here real soon. I’ve got plenty of new stuff to throw your way. Anyway, I manged to watch some movies during all that non-computer time, so here you go…
Frozen
The idea behind Frozen, the 2010 horror movie about three skiers stuck on a chair lift high above a mountain side, kind of reminds me of the old Mitch Hedberg joke about the above-ground swimming pool commercial, and how it can only be 30 seconds long because that’s the most amount of time you can depict having fun in an above-ground swimming pool. I didn’t think it would be possible to squeeze a whole movie’s worth of scares out of such an above-ground premise (and it wasn’t, really), but Frozen does manage to push your anxiety meter well into the red simply because it thrives on a totally reasonable, palpable fear. That being said, it’s not hard to predict what lies ahead for our stranded skiers (i.e. finding a way down, frostbite, etc.), who don’t seem to be taking their survival very seriously (do up your coat, idiot!), and you have to be able to handle the kind of dialogue that evolves from a stranded situation, such as blaming, arguing, crying, and reminiscing. However, the circling, hungry wolves were an excellent touch.
This film is a dramatization of events that occurred October 1st through the 9th of 2000, in the Northern Alaskan town of Nome. To better explain the events of this story, the director has included actual archived footage throughout the film…Every dramatized scene in this movie is supported by either archived audio, video or as it was related by Dr. Tyler during extensive interviews with the director. In the end, what you believe is yours to decide. Please be advised that some of what you’re about to see is extremely disturbing.
That’s Milla Jovovich at the beginning of The Fourth Kind, breaking the wall in order to pull us into a strange world of psychological fury and alien abductions. Jovovich plays Dr. Abigail Tyler, whose work as a psychologist treating abducted patients is documented in this movie through, as the intro suggests, actual video and audio shot by Dr. Tyler during her sessions and actor-portrayed dramatizations, kind of like what you used to get on shows like Unsolved Mysteries or Rescue 911. Only there’s no Stack, no Shatner, but the search for the truth is pretty much the same.
It’s currently -42°C where I live. It looks like there’s fog everywhere, but I think that’s just the air freezing. It’s a hoar frost apocalypse and death is inevitable. So I’m hunkering down beside a space heater and taking as many warm baths as I can before the hot water pipes freeze up because if I dare to venture outside, something like what you see on the cover of The Last Winter could happen to me. Probably in a matter of minutes. It chills my nerves just thinking about it. Although, freezing temperatures aren’t really an issue in this movie (it’s the warming weather that seems to be causing all the horrific problems), but north is north and snow is snow and bad things always happen in the north in the snow.