By JASON COMERFORD

The high point of Adam Green’s 2006 slasher homage Hatchet was a gloriously over-the-top 360-degree camera move around a character getting the top of their head ripped off; you may be as surprised as I was to find that the most resonant moment of Green’s subsequent genre entry Frozen was a quiet conversation about a pet dog. Frozen went more or less direct to video, despite a decent reception at its 2010 Sundance Film Festival premiere and a limited theatrical release from Anchor Bay, but it’s slowly getting the attention it deserved. Green’s Hatchet films are goofy, gooey fun, but Frozen is a marked step up the quality ladder, favoring keenly observed characterizations and careful direction over wall-to-wall gore and cackling, unkillable psychopaths.

Collaborating again with Green, composer Andy Garfield took the film’s admirable restraint to heart, contributing a subtle, churning score that skillfully enhances moments of both bittersweet warmth and icy terror. As young skiers Kevin Ziegers, Shawn Ashmore and Emma Bell find themselves trapped on a chairlift with night falling, storms closing in, and wolves circling below, the full extent of both Green and Garfield’s talents emerge, giving all three characters believable motivations and unique reactions to the impossible situation they’re faced with. Many other genre efforts (including Green’s own) cynically set up their characters as disposable slasher bait, but Frozen demonstrates a genuine interest in the people at its center, and generates real tension as they struggle to escape their increasingly perilous dilemma.

Garfield doesn’t skimp on the terror, though, and he does the heavy lifting in one of the film’s key scenes, as one of the trio faces a grisly fate from a pack of hungry wolves. “I’m Pretty Afraid” begins with a blast of rattling percussion as the wolves appear, and proceeds to ramp the tension up to unbearable levels, the strings swirling into a horrific cacophony as the inevitable unfolds. Green lets the worst of the scene play out in the viewer’s imagination, choosing tight close-ups and letting Garfield’s music to rise to a horrific shriek – the scream the viewer feels in the back of their own throat. The score is equally effective in later moments of quiet introspection and elegiac beauty, giving the story an added, welcome layer of warmth and texture, but when it’s time to go for the jugular, Garfield doesn’t shrink from the task. Frozen’s score was recently released in a limited edition of 500 from 2M1 Records; digital downloads can also be purchased from Amazon and iTunes.