The Ice Queen



Scientists have discovered a perfectly preserved frozen female specimen of a humanoid creature dating back to sometime around the Ice Age. According to the researchers, she’s more bug-like than human, is able to freeze her prey from the inside-out, and suffers from a metabolism vastly different from humans, in that it drastically slows down when exposed to warmth. As such, they’re currently keeping her in a “warm suit” so that she doesn’t wake up prematurely and cause her an excruciating amount of pain. But, wouldn’t you know it, that’s exactly what ends up happening. While transporting the woman by plane, the suit malfunctions and the Ice Lady goes berserk, wounding the scientist, killing the pilot and causing the plane to crash-land into the side of a snowy mountain. The resulting avalanche from the crash sends the plane down the mountain and ends up taking out an entire ski resort. Thankfully though it’s the off season, so there are only a handful of employees maintaining the resort. But in a big downside for the survivors, now they not only have to figure out a way to dig themselves out of a literal mountain’s worth of snow, but they also have to deal with a very pissed off Ice Lady who could easily freeze them to death with a single touch.


Or at least the crappy CGI will freeze them…kinda.

Since December has rolled around once again, that means it’s time for some winter-themed fare. I’ve had this one on my watch-list for quite a while now, but had no idea what it was. Then I saw the Edgewood Studios logo and immediately started to laugh… and then cry. Because that logo almost assuredly means you’re in for a bad time.

For those who don’t know, Edgewood Studios is a small, independent production company based out of Vermont, and is responsible for such gems as Time Chasers, Icebreakers, Radical Jack, and Arachnia. All of which have ended up spoofed by either Mystery Science Theater 3000, or Rifftrax. So that should give you an idea of the pedigree of the film you’re working with here. So once I saw Edgewood Studios pop up on the screen I already knew Ice Queen wasn’t going to be any good. But I still had a little bit of hope, because while those previously mentioned film’s like Time Chasers aren’t really what you could describe as “good”, they do have a level of cheesy charm to them, either by featuring a couple familiar actors (like Sean Astin, Stacy Keach and Bruce Campbell in Icebreakers), or they use quaint, special effect techniques (like the stop-motion animation seen in Arachnia). Unfortunately though, Ice Queen falls into neither of those categories, and ends up just being…Well, a boring dud that can’t even live up to any of its own rather dull poster designs.



The main problem the film has is that the titular “Ice Queen” is never the film’s focus. Oh yes, every film description you read (mine included) focuses exclusively on that. Why? Because it’s the draw of the film, conceivably the main focus, and the only interesting part of the movie. But, those descriptions are lies. In reality, the film’s focus is on Johnny, one of three (!) of the ski-resort’s resident losers, who spends the whole first third of the movie (1) cheating on his girlfriend by sleeping with a booby-licious blond in a hot tub, (2) giving the blond all of his and his girlfriend’s rent money, (3) being bad at his job, (4) hiding from his boss, and (5) trying to hide his indiscretion from his girlfriend when booby-licious shows up at the resort looking for a job. In short, Johnny sucks. But, if you can’t already tell, Johnny is also this film’s version of “the hero.” That’s right, this is the idiot the film wants you to root for. A guy who in any other (competent) horror movie would have been blissfully killed off before the 3rd Act was over. But is he here? No. Which means you not only have to put up with this schmuck for the entire film, but you get to watch him deal with his ridiculous relationship problems for the whole movie, because THAT’S the real hidden focus of this film. Oh, and the Ice Queen occasionally shows up and kills someone and/or makes everyone run away so you don’t forget that she’s there. But mostly it’s about watching Johnny douche-bro apologize to his girlfriend and tell her how much he loves her. And either the pickings up in Vermont are ridiculously slim, or this chick is extremely desperate, because she ends up falling for his cockamamie BS and forgiving him. But I guess people in movies are a lot nicer than I am, because I would have been hand feeding him to the Ice Queen before the film’s halfway point, just so I wouldn’t have to listen to him blabber anymore. It honestly gets so bad that I’m half-convinced the movie was written by an incompetent cheater who thought he was god’s gift to women, and just shat this out because he wanted to feel better about himself.


Really? Even the Ice Lady is into this turd bucket? Why? Whoever wrote this needs therapy…

And to be clear, it’s not that I have a problem with a horror movie being character focused. It’s just that nobody is going to care about any of these characters being the focus of anything. For one, because the film’s dialogue is absolutely atrocious and makes everyone sound and act like a complete idiot. And second, because the acting on display here is just… You know what, I’m going to be nice and just say “not very good” and leave it at that. But just know that when I say that, that I’m grading on an extremely forgiving curve, because there’s a Golden Retriever in this movie, and she actually does a good job and ends up being the only non-annoying character in the film. The vast majority of the human actors, however, either had no, or very few other acting credits to their name, or Ice Queen was literally one of the first projects they were ever in. So I’ll just let you fill in the blanks with that. Or, you know, you can end up being really disappointed if you ignore me and watch this because you didn’t heed my warning.


Pictured: The best part of the movie.

And don’t expect the monster lady to pick up any of the slack either. She spends the whole movie in bad make-up and a wig, wears a questionable body suit, does nothing but hiss and screech at everything, and spends most of the movie doing this weird wriggly dance that resembles something your grandma might do if she drank over half the bottle of cooking sherry before actually doing any cooking. I still haven’t figured out what the purpose was for that last part, but unlike that shimmy that robot girl does in M3GEN, it doesn’t come across as creepy or scary. It just ends up looking…weird.


Honestly, can someone please tell me WTF is up with all the writhing?

I think the film’s one saving grace, and a very minor one I might add, is that it sticks to mostly practical effects. Though you have to keep in mind that this was a budget film, so beyond the freaking attack helicopter that they rented for the opening scene (wtf…?) most of it looks a little hokey. The blood looks fake, the severed arms look fake, the movie gets a little too splatter heavy at times when it doesn’t need to, their avalanche is really just sand and/or sugar that they dumped down a miniature mountain… You get the picture. It’s fine and entertaining for what it is, but it ain’t great.


Wait, if there are only, like, 6 people at the lodge where the hell did all these cars come from?


Hey doc, what’s this green thing in my bone? You think that’s bad or something?

On the flip-side of this though, the film also ends up being wildly inconsistent with its set design. They’re in the mountains…they’re not in the mountains. It’s snowing…It’s not snowing. Then, after the avalanche, the lodge ends up completely covered in snow and the movie makes it look like the inside of the resort just got trashed by a massive earthquake. Like, walls are crumbling, the ceiling is caving in, there’s (fake) snow everywhere, furniture is askew… It almost looks like a bomb went off. But I guess they could only manage that aesthetic for 2 rooms and a hallway, because by the time they get to the second part of the film they’ve abandoned that vibe all together (or they forgot about it, it could easily go either way) and you get everyone wandering through perfectly preserved kitchen spaces and an immaculately set up dining room. I’m just saying, if you’re going to fake it, the least they could’ve done was be consistent with their fake-out and, I don’t know, throw a couple pots on the floor or flip over a friggin’ table or two. Would that have been so hard?


I guess it was.


I’m still bothered by the furniture being screwed to the ceiling.

So while some movies end up being “so bad, they’re good”, sadly Ice Queen is just bad. And not even charmingly bad. More like cringingly sucky. The visuals are sub-par, the story focuses on ALL the wrong things, the acting is often painful, and the dialogue is equally so. And while I admit that some of the badness can be laughable, and that the latter does sometimes lead to some pretty amusing one-liners, like when the manager notices the avalanche coming and stoically mutters “Holy fucking Christmas…,” before running into the lodge to avoid the Sugar-lanche, odds are none of it will equate to a good time for you unless you have an unusually high pain tolerance. So if that kind of thing sounds appealing, then by all means go right ahead. But if that ain’t your jam, then I’m sure you can find a more competent film involving an Ice Queen that doesn’t involve following the exploits of a certain Disney character. Believe me, unless you’re Johnny, you deserve better.

Ice Queen is available on a variety of streaming services.

Ice Queen is also available on DVD, but it looks like it might currently be out of print. (Lucky you.)

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