FrightFest review – Frostbite (2026)
Lukas Rinker has a thing about disasters trapping people in tiny places – his FrightFest selection Ach du Sheisse! (Holy Shit!) was about one guy stuck in an overturned portable toilet … this slightly bigger-scale disaster picture features a small group of interested parties trapped in a cable car swept to the edge of a precipice by an avalanche. It keeps piling on the agony for the dwindling band of squabbling survivors – upto and including a guest spot by a she-wolf defending her territory.
The set-up is like an eco-aware spin on a 1970s TV movie as Charles (Kris Hitchen) – who once won a silver medal in the Winter Olympics – schmoozes international bigwig Mr Lee (Adrian Pang) as a bid to sell Mount Kilgore in Canada as a site for 2030 only for his environmentalist official ex-wife Martia (Zoe Boyle) to raise objections … just before a malfunctioning avalanche trigger system goes off and a million tons of snow crash into the car. Also aboard are Charles’ estranged teen daughter Billie (Lily Curley), competent but doomed Corman (Denzel Baidoo) and a repulsive, probably crooked senator (Andrew Scarborough) who thinks he can shout and bully his way out of the situation. As things get worse, the family drama comes to a head with squabbles giving way to sacrifices.
Ach du Scheisse! was a black comedy but this is soapier, though there are some cynical elements like Charles having to pretend that the frozen and dead millionaire is only badly injured in order to persuade overworked rescue services to come and haul their nobody asses out of danger. It’s another in the current trickle of stuck up a mountain films, though it has less dangling than most – even as the gondola is balanced on the edge of a long drop – and more stress on fraying cables (deadly when they snap) and slowly-cracking perspex. The wolf isn’t quite up to the standard of The Grey, but at least has a neat entrance moment as the survivors are cheered by canine scrabbling in the snow and radio a rescue party to say that their dogs have found them only to be told that the dogs aren’t on the mountain at the moment.
It’s a German-Danish co-production set in Canada, featuring a mostly British cast doing mid-Atlantic accents.
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