Frozen

Three snowboarders - student Dan (Kevin Zegers), his best friend Joe (Shawn Ashmore) and girlfriend Parker (Emma Bell) - become stranded on a New England mountain chairlift and are forced to make terrifying choices to stay alive in Hatchet director Adam Green's iced gem. Taking its well-earned place in the sub-genre of wilderness survival thrillers, along with Open Water and Adrift, this clever high-concept shocker puts ordinary people in an extreme but believable situation and milks the suspense factor for all it's worth. Some may find the early character-building scenes a little too geeky, packed as they are with fanboy in-jokes. But once the premise is locked tight, small actions become potentially epic tragedies, with frostbite, hypothermia and a pack of hungry wolves on the life-threatening dangers list. Green choreographs the dangling trio from a multitude of intriguing angles, showing a keen eye for moody menace and compelling gruesomeness.