Freeze

Found this low budget horror film on a streaming service and decided to watch it. And I'm glad I did. It was only now I've come to review it did I find how much of the minority I seem to be. I'm guessing it's set about 100-150 years ago when a sail-ship takes an expedition to the North Pole in order to find a previous lost vessel. Naturally, they find something pretty nasty waiting to take a bite out of them in the frozen wastelands.

As I say, it's low budget. Don't expect any amazing set pieces, but what I enjoyed was the cast. They were older than your average cast of a modern horror film. Most cases have actors barely out of their late teens cast in roles which should really go to middle aged people. Here, I actually believed that the men on the crew were hardened sailors - especially the captain himself, who I was really rooting for.

Now, don't think that I'm saying that everything is perfect here. The monsters are nice - for the budget, but they're basically men in costumes and the lack of movement was really visible when the creatures had to attack humans. Because the monsters' mouths obviously weren't designed to move and be seen to take bites out of people, they just sort of rub their hideous, slimy faces against the people. It was actually quite comical, unfortunately.

Plus there's a woman on board. Yes, the 'in story' explanation is that she's a stowaway, but her character seems really out of place, like she's had Ripley's ('Alien' franchise) personality imprinted on her. She even tapes two guns together in a weird throwback to that classic scene from 'Aliens.' It's very out of place.

Then you have the human antagonist of the film, who chews up every piece of scenery even harder than any beastie could. He's more evil than a thousand Dr Evils and he shows it.

Yet, I watched it right until the end. I actually enjoyed it. It had its flaws, but the casting and story was different enough to keep me entertained. Although, perhaps its strongest 'selling point' (for me!) was that it was set a long time in the past and this is the first new horror film I've seen in a while where the teens don't have to point out that their cell phones don't have any reception.

Don't get me wrong now, I absolutely love the horror industry, and when considering movies, I do my very best to find excuses for weaker ones. I can talk about the budget, the experience of the people involved in the making, the conditions, the meddling from the studios and so on.

Freeze failed on absolutely every aspect:

• terrible monsters. The costumes weren't abysmal but their movement, the sounds just amateur all the way.

• killshots. Whenever it is time for a killshot or for some suspense, we get fade to black and a scream.

• effects. Practical but sadly all bad.

• plot. Definitely not ok. You witness more dialogue than anything else.

• no tensions, eyecandy, nudity, gore.

Sadly it really is a prime example of how not to do a horror. For me it looked more like live theatre, also done very badly. It just did not work and it is absolutely impossible to take it serious.

You need about 15 minutes and you realise that this one...is not good.

Cheers.

Pure garbage!

This movie starts off with 35 minutes of pointlessness.

That's act 1. I don't want to write spoilers here so I'll just tell you it doesn't get better, it gets worse and worse and worse.

The plot holes are massive. I mean you would have to suspend all reality of society to believe some of the things that occur to set up the "story" or "plot" or whatever this thing is.

There are other parts where you will just shake your head and ask: Why. That's the main question. This is utter nonsense. Unless you're into watching a plot that moves in ways that confuse you and make you annoyed, I would avoid this movie. Not good.

Poor acting, poor costumes, poor looking monsters and this is just the 5 min of the movie. Poor acting goes into over acting by hamming it up like a cheap thespian on stage in Bognor Regis. The creatures remind me of the Jon Petwee , Dr Who series run of rubber monsters. Seriously this movie is not worth your time because it sucks on a huge scale. 1/10 for being the worst movie to call itself an horror movie. I haven't left any spoilers in this review because there is no worthy spoilers to be given away in truth because the film is just so awful. If anyone can justify making this movie I will be astounded but I am going for tax loss reasons!

The movie gives a nod to H. P. Lovecraft, and uses creatures that would be at home in a Roger Corman movie. It is not a movie of a ship being stranded in the Arctic for years, and their survival. Although they are in search of the crew and Captain Streiner, who set out to try and sail to the North Pole, so this was set in the 19th Century, with sailing ships. Their ship also get trapped in the ice, and then creatures, ichthyoids, come aboard and do some killing. What is left of the crew flees the ship, and there is also a woman who was a stowaway on the ship who also leaves. They are able to find a cave, which also has quite a few ichthyoids present, and they also find Captain Streiner, but his crew was all killed, but he managed to survive. The scenery is interesting, a vast snow wasteland, but when the people are outside, they really aren't dressed for the cold. Coats unbuttoned, no hats and only in one scene did they have gloves on. It could have been really interesting, but instead missed the mark.