Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
This is going to be a challenge for me, but I’ve never been one to run from a challenge. Actually that’s not entirely true but it does sound nice. The challenge is I’ve seen this movie ‘Frozen Kiss’ and I truly try to make it a point to say something about everything I see simply because it halfway justifies myself wasting time watching movies. There’s a ton of stuff I could do instead of watching a movie, like mow the lawn or clean the garage or talk to my wife, but I can’t do these things AND watch a crapload of movies so I must hunt and peck some typo ridden nonsense as justification, otherwise I am truly wasting time. Thus we have ‘Frozen Kiss’ which is about as bland a movie as I’ve recently seen. It’s not a terrible movie, even though I would’ve preferred terrible because now I have something to say about this terribleness. Neither is it a good film or a terribly interesting movie which also leaves us with a little something to say but I’m gonna try. Please, look elsewhere if you want smart and intelligent discussion. Actually, you would probably want to do that with almost anything I happen to be commenting on.
Say hello to Shelley (Cameron Goodman). She’s a total slut. While her poor husband Keith is sitting in their home looking pathetic while loading his gun, his wife is having extramarital sex with Ryan (Jamie Martz). Ryan is a total loser which kind of matches Shelley’s sluttiness. Keith makes his way over to Ryan’s trailer, a trailer he shares with fellow drug addict Wade, while actively avoiding his baby's mother who is constantly badgering Ryan for money and for him to spend time with his child. We hate to pass judgment on Ryan but yes, he does qualify as a high caliber loser. So Keith sees the wife exiting the trailer… mind you he has a nice home and his wife is screwing some dude who shares a trailer with a pothead so I can understand his pain… and he blows himself away. So sad.
While that does suck it doesn’t deter Shelley from her torrid love affair with her man, even though they are ostracized by the locals. Then one fateful night on this snowy California evening they go to a party. They do drugs at this party. They proceed to drive home on the snowy road, high on drugs, and they begin to trip. Bad. Ryan runs over some dude standing in the middle of road. Or not. Shelley is being chased by her husband with half his dome missing. Or not. They are both being chased by a group of angry devil worshipping, human sacrificing skin heads. Or not.
Anyway Ryan has crashed his Cherokee into a snowdrift and is in communication with the helpful police dispatcher who has sent one of Shelley’s many ex-boyfriends, the terminally pissed off Bruce (Chris Meyer), who is a police officer to find out where the hell they are. Bruce still loves Shelley and is going to find her no matter what. Bruce hates Shelley’s alcoholic mother Gayle (Mimi Rogers) who he feels broke them up. Regardless, all Shelley and Ryan have to do is stay in the car on this sub-zero night and eventually help will come. We have mentioned they are high on hallucinogens right? That’s so not going to happen. Think… oh, I don’t know… a Frozen Kiss.
I suppose my main issue with this movie, at least what little issue I was able to coax out of this bland exercise, is what exactly is the movie attempting to be? When it began it looked like one of those Lifetime TV dramas with the drunk mom, the sluttish daughter, the tortured husband and it would pretty much retain that feel for the duration of the film because there is an awful lot of melodrama going on, but every once in a while we’d have some horror element pop in and out, such as the dead husband with the missing face running along side Jeep Cherokees. Then it turns into a psychological drama because we don’t learn about their drug usage until later on in the movie when the character of Bruce was turning this tale into a police procedural. Bruce also made this a bit of a revenge movie since he was absolutely hating on everybody in this movie, especially Ryan.
So we have this movie, part love story featuring characters that I don’t anybody could give a damn about, part horror movie which was underdeveloped, and wholly melodramatic. The thing is there was this overriding sheen of blah covering this film. Harry Bromley Davenport’s direction was listless, the film wasn’t dynamic to look at by way of lighting or atmosphere, the performances where adequate but not spectacular with the possible exception of Chris Meyer’s angry cop of Bruce. We could theorize that the overriding message of this movie is that Using Drugs is Bad but thirty second PSA’s are more effective in conveying this message. Or maybe the message is Love Conquers All… except the cold. I don’t know. Maybe if I was a hallucinogen inhaling trailer park living total slut I would’ve gotten more out of this movie and could relate to it better but I only have two of those requirements under my belt. I’m not saying which ones either.
