Monday, February 08, 2010

Frozen in 150 Words or Less

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Zip up your damn jackets and put on your damn hoods! I mean, goddamnit people! At a certain point it becomes impossible to give a shit about characters that're behaving so irrationally. If you're trapped and freezing to death, don't you think you might huddle with the other people around you for warmth? Or at the very least put your damn hands in your pockets? There comes a point when your need for your characters to make unwise decisions in order for you to still have a plot rubs up against your characters not behaving like human beings at all, where they simply become stick figures you're manipulating for cheap drama. This movie passes that point about halfway in, and I just stopped caring after that. Just in time for the talky middle!
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5 comments:

Joe Reid said...

You knew it was time for the (stultifyingly) talky middle because that's when all the music went away. You knew it was time to start caring again when the score SURGED back onto the scene.

Oy.

At least Kevin Zegers looked appealing. Until...you know.

K@thr3enKL3i@ said...

Oh my God i so agree with you. I can't stand how freakin stupid the character's are on most horror films. Makes me think squirrels are smarter!

Unknown said...

I thought it nailed some of the more horrific elements (like the SURPRISE moment before, well, you know...)

but I feel like they didn't build up enough about the characters before all the crazy started...

Say goodbye, empathy!

Anonymous said...

Must disagree. I really liked this flick, and the things you mentioned didn't bother me one bit (I kind of just assumed it was a concession to the filmmaking process: we have to see their faces--nobody wants to stare at ski masks for 80 minutes).

And the other things (exposed hands among them) I thought could be explained away by the characters' state of mind: stranded, exposed to the elements, drifting in and out of consciousness...you might mess up a bit.

Well, and the fact that these three weren't the brightest bulbs in the first place.

Jason Adams said...

It was just too many concessions in the face of logic for me, Uncle Mike. The concessions got in the way of the most basic of human survival instincts so that they stopped being even recognizably human for me. There's a level of stupidity I'm willing to entertain in my horror movie characters in order t allow the plot to go on. These people denied the very basics of their own humanity in order for the plot to go on. If something is cold, you shield yourself from it. It's not up for discussion, and denying them that is just lazy and stupid and unacceptable filmmaking. If you can't find a way around making your characters dumber than the stupidest animals in order to tell your story then your story isn't worth telling, or you need to find a real way around it, and not this lazy bullshit. Sorry, don't mean to rant, Uncle Mike! It's just I've actually gotten angrier about a lot of it since seeing the film.