- Directed by Adam Green
- Written by Adam Green
- Stars Shawn Ashmore, Emma Bell, Kevin Zegers
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 33 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo1gJDtgOMU
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This isn’t the happy cartoon musical. It’s a little bit of a contrived chain of events to get the trio to where they end up, but the acting is good, the effects are realistic, and it’s a horrifying situation to be in despite it not being strictly in the horror genre.
Synopsis
We begin by looking at the innards of ski lift machinery. Credits roll.
Parker, Joe, and Dan are at the bottom of the ski slopes. Dan gives Parker $50 to bribe a guy to let them onto the ski lift. It costs double that, but they finally get on the ski lift. Partway up the mountain, the chairlift stops. Parker gets nervous, especially when Dan starts bouncing up and down. After a minute or two, it starts up again and they get to the snowboarding zone.
The two guys insist that Parker wear a helmet; Joe meets Shannon and Ryan and almost gets into a fight. Joe wants to do some “real skiing” rather than watch Parker fall down all day, but Dan insists that Parker come along just to watch. It’s getting late, and the ski lift operator won’t let them on because bad weather is coming and they’re clearing the mountain, but they beg for one more run. He relents and lets them on.
The ski attendant gets called to the manager’s office over something, and his fill-in guy sees the red flag which means the ski lift is empty. Meanwhile, the ski lift stops with Parker, Dan, and Joe stuck on it. They talk about “the worst way to die” to pass the time.
Then the lights all go off; the resort is now closed. They had been thinking that the lift was temporarily broken, but now they know they’re stranded. Dan makes the excuse that maybe the power has gone out. The three bicker and argue for a bit as panic sets in. This is Sunday, and the resort isn’t open again until Friday.
It’s not long before the snowstorm hits. A snowplow drives under them, but the driver can’t hear them yelling because of the wind. He drives back down the mountain.
Parker accidentally drops her glove and risks frostbite. Dan decides to jump down, but it’s like fifty feet above the ground. He goes for it and breaks both legs. They all yell up and down to each other until they start hearing the wolves howl. Then they watch as the wolf closes in on Dan, who can’t even stand up much less run.
Joe thinks he wants to try to climb on the cable to the next chair, which is next to a tower that has a ladder. The cable cuts through his gloves, so he returns to the chair lift in time to watch Dan be eaten by a whole pack of wolves.
Parker and Joe are both getting colder, but they don’t try to jump down. They start arguing about who is to blame for Dan’s death. Parker freaks out about her little dog at home is going to starve to death when she dies on this chair lift.
Morning arrives. Parker wakes up and can’t get her hand off the safety bar; it’s frozen to it. She forces it, which removes a bunch of skin. Her face is frostbitten as well, so is Joe’s. Still, it’s a bright, sunny day, so maybe someone will come in to work and find them. Parker pees herself; she can’t hold it anymore.
Joe decides to try climbing the wire to the next car a second time. The wolves return below Joe, waiting for him to fall. He makes it to the next car, but his gloves are torn up and his hands are bloody. Parker throws the ski poles down for Joe to defend himself when he gets down to the ground. Now he has to climb to the pole from the second chair lift. “You can do it!” Parker yells.
He does it! He makes it to the ladder and climbs down. The wolves immediately attack, but he runs them off with the ski poles. He takes off on a snowboard, but the wolves are right behind him.
Time passes, and Parker is alone. Night falls. She wakes up in the morning, and no one has come for her; Joe must not have made it. With her frostbitten hand, she can’t climb the cable, so she gets ready to jump. Suddenly, the cable lets go and the whole chair falls about twenty feet. This gets her closer to the ground, so she drops off. Unfortunately, the chair falls on top of her leg, causing another injury.
She eventually walks and crawls down the mountain. She finds what’s left of Joe, half-eaten. The wolves are there too, but they’re too busy eating to care about Parker. She comes to a road and passes out. A car drives by and spots her laying in the road; the man puts her in the car and calls the hospital.
Commentary
Again, we have a weird confluence of coincidence which leads to disaster. Again, people leave their cell phones behind for no real reason. Ah well, once the problem starts, everybody behaves more or less believably.
There’s not much that happened before the group gets on the ski lift, so in order to make a full-length movie out of three people on a high chair, there’s a lot of talking about personal stories. This gets a little old after a while, which makes it feel like they aren’t doing anything to be rescued.
We don’t see much of the wolf attack, although it was filmed. Being injured and all, Parker seemed to make it down the mountain fairly easily, so those wolves must have caught Joe pretty quickly.