You know the expression when you’ve overeaten and feel sick later, “Your eyes were too big for your stomach.” Well, I imagine the filmmakers behind Ice Queen are feeling mighty nauseous right now because their movie was waaaay too big for its budget. They tried to make a very ambitious feature-length horror movie with plane crashes, avalanches, special make-ups and CGI, with about $1.98.
A small plane smuggling the remains of an ancient, perfectly preserved ice age body crashes into snowy mountains when its two occupants get into a fight over the valuable cargo — both men are out of commission, but the corpse resurrects and the Ice Queen (an actor in a very bad ‘hag’ rubber Halloween mask) goes on the hunt.
The rest of the story centers on an avalanche-crushed ski resort (looks like snow out of a can that you’d buy at the .99 cents store), where few a few people (couldn’t afford sandwiches for unpaid extras) are trapped after all their vehicles are destroyed (the cars might as well have had the Hot Wheels logo on them) in the onslaught. As one nerdy guy who is an inexplicable babe-magnet and two very scantily-clad bottle blondes huddle in a Styrofoam set that’s supposed to be a lodge, the bloodthirsty Ice Queen lurks nearby.
There are so many bad things about Ice Queen — which is an obvious twist on the far superior Decoys — it’s difficult to single anything out. It’s not even scary, except for one part early on in the film that seems to be a PSA for thinking twice before you get plastic surgery (either that, or one of the actresses took the title of the film too seriously and had two blocks of ice inserted directly into her chest).
Ice Queen is not even so bad it’s good, but it just might be more fun to watch with a snarky friend to add commentary or as background at a party (make that a party with a lot of brain cell killing booze).
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson