It's tough to warm up to 'Frozen'

The low-budget horror film is a long-standing cinematic challenge, like those annual egg-dropping contests held at science fairs. The winning results, like Wes Craven's 1972 classic, "The Last House on the Left," or last year's stealth hit "Paranormal Activity," often are impressive feats of ingenuity, creativity and economy.

Then there are efforts like "Frozen," which land with an audible splat.

Writer-director Adam Green begins with a simple premise - three friends get stuck on a ski lift when the resort shuts down for the week - but fails to complicate the story in any

interesting way. As a result, we're all trapped on this miserable lift, listening to three wholly uninteresting characters - actors Emma Bell and Kevin Zegers, playing a romantic couple, and Shawn Ashmore as their third wheel - chitchat, bicker, weep and eventually scream their lungs out.

The disappointingly short list of horrors includes frostbite, sunburn, a pack of wolves and, most mundanely, the need to pee. One character breaks a leg, then another character breaks a leg. Incredibly, the final character also breaks a leg. And, if you got bored reading that, imagine watching it.