This past Saturday I uploaded a pair of reviews for low budget horror productions with the shared simple goal of wanting to scare audiences, except only one really succeeded.<\/p>\n
Adam Green\u2019s Frozen<\/strong> (Anchor Bay) is based around a simple hook: 3 friends trapped in a chairlift for what could be a week at a closed down ski resort, with personal issues, nasty winter elements, and wild things rapidly reducing their chances of survival.<\/p>\n Peter Atencio\u2019s The Rig<\/strong> (Anchor Bay) is essentially Alien<\/strong> on an oil rig, which is more or less what Sean S. Cunningham tried in Deepstar Six<\/strong> (1989), and George P. Cosmatos mimicked in Leviathan<\/strong> (1989) with a creature more reminiscent of the The Thing<\/strong> (1982), absorbing its prey into a walking genetic soup of faces and arms.<\/p>\n Frozen<\/strong>\u2019s location was simple \u2013 a chair, 50 feet above ground \u2013 whereas Atencio had an entire oil rig at his disposal, but the use of imagination, storytelling, and film technique is vastly different. Green used light, shadows, sounds, good writing and a great trio of actors to make a tense shocker, but Atencio seemed more content to make a product designed to fill rental shelves and online catalogues in an age when being original is what makes films, as rental product tend to look and sound utterly generic.<\/p>\n When reviewing films, it\u2019s sometimes funny how there\u2019s less need to blather about why a film like Frozen<\/a><\/strong> (M<\/a>) is good, but more thought is required to explain why The Rig<\/a><\/strong> (M<\/a>) is a terrible missed opportunity.<\/p>\n