Ice Queen (2005)

	Director: Neil Kinsella
	Starring: Ami Chorlton, Harmon Walsh, Noelle Reno, Jennifer Hill
	Run Time: 92 mins
	Certificate: 15
	Rating:

Plot
A scientist finds what he believes to be a frozen female humanoid from the ice age and arranges for the body to be transported by plane. However he is double crossed and in the midst of a mid-air struggle with the mercenary pilot, the humanoid awakens and causes the plane to crash into the snow-covered Killington Mountains. The crash causes an avalanche which traps a group of friends inside a ski resort lodge. Trapped inside the resort with the humanoid on the loose, it seems like all hope is lost.

Review
I'm a bit wary of straight-to-DVD horror flicks now. I have been for a while. The video shop is full of horror films which sound good and have kick ass front covers but look like they've been made by a bunch of students on their summer break with appalling acting and horrendous production values. It has been rare for me to unearth films which do deliver. So it pains me to even think what made me pick up this flick with a picture of an odd-looking monstrous woman on the front. It has been sat on my shelf for months whilst other, blatantly crap-looking films have found their way into my DVD player. So it came of a bit of a surprise to find out that Ice Queen is nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. Don't get me wrong it's a pretty generic, throwaway 92 minutes featuring everything you would expect from a film like this. However it has reasonable production values and it seems like it's heart is in the right place.

The premise is nothing really new. There's a bunch of a characters stuck inside an isolated location with a monster killing them one-at-a-time. Writers must dip their hands into a hat of generic characters whenever they pen a new horror flick and see which random characters they have to blend together. There's the weird scientist, the slutty blonde, token black guy, etc. The mistake made here is that too much time is wasted trying to develop their characters when this precious time should have been used to build up a bit of suspense. I don't really care about a catfight in the ski resort because someone has been cheating with the blonde, especially when the Ice Queen has already been released. That's the underlying problem here. They have a cool monster but don't really do much with her except growl from a distance and occasionally freeze people who get too close. She's more like an afterthought, popping up whenever the writers need to take a break from the daytime soap opera love triangle! The ski resort didn't look that big either and there doesn't seem to be a many places to explore or hide so where does everyone hide for the duration of the film for the Ice Queen to be out of shot for so long? Despite being buried under an avalanche, the sets are still pretty well lit and you rarely get the feeling that anyone is trapped. The film does make you feel chilly a few times though with numerous cave-ins and plenty of artificial snow.

The villain of the piece is actually a pretty original creation. The Ice Queen looks unique and thankfully they haven't lifted ideas from other more famous monsters (usually the monsters in these cheapos look like the alien from Alien). She freezes people from the inside out but isn't afraid of smashing her hands into people. The film isn't very gory though but it isn't about that, given the method of dispatch is freezing. The actress inside the make-up does a good job of giving her some quirky movements, although at one point the character does stick her middle finger up to one of the other characters - she's supposedly been frozen for millions of years and it's pretty remarkable if people were flipping each other the bird in the ice age!

Verdict
Ice Queen surprised me with it's slightly-better-than-average production values and attempts to make something other than just another genre flick. Unfortunately that's all it turns out to be in the end and not a very good one at that. It wears it's heart on it's sleeve but it has clearly stopped beating!