Freezer Burn (2007) User Reviews

not what I expected but not bad either

[Rob-O-Cop · 6/10 · 9 June 2009]

It's hard to say exactly what I expected from this movie going into it.

It has the appearance of a turkey in the way it's executed but none the less I personally was relatively entertained and I have nothing to do with the production team. I could see how some people watching this could, if it caught them on the wrong day, hate this movie.

It's a pretty unusual plot to start with, although I think the plot outline is somewhat misleading on the sensational "sidesteps the issue of age by freezing himself till its not an issue" thing. Yes that does happen but this movie is really about an inventor who is mildly a 'dweeb' who is in a relationship that is imbalanced against him and has a lab partner who is unreliable and a bad luck magnet. He invents successful cryogenics but because of everything else in his life the invention comes only in time to spare him the pain of his present existence, so he freezes himself on the off chance that he can rely on his unreliable side kick and that in the future things will go how he wants them to, but of course that's not the case.

The laughs are understated, that's for sure, but I found the events not obvious and better for that. it doesn't go well for him, and if anything it's a little too realistic on the actual problems our protagonists plans might hit. Hollywood would gloss over these in order to give us a whiz bang story of sci fi adventure, where as this movie investigates all the bits Hollywood would ignore, and I found it interesting for that.

Yes it is budget cinema, that's plainly obvious from the get go, and the delivery has a light comedy feel where perhaps it would have been better with something a little darker.

The sets are rough and although the acting is not crap no actor manages to pull off a stunner, they all have good moments, but then they all have some bad ones too. Nothing a multimillion dollar budget couldn't fix I'm sure.

a lot hinges on Robert Harriell's performance and that's perhaps where this movie trips in that he's not a particularly likable or dis-likable character. Maybe that's the delicate middle ground they wanted to take with this movie, but it would have appealed to more people if they'd made more of a decision on dark or light.

Special mention to Michael Consiglio for his shifty unreliable side kick part. There were some funny throw away lines delivered well from him, he was charmingly a jerk and funny for it.

In summary I didn't hate this movie. It's definitely not an indie award winner but it's not without merit either only if you manage to be in the right mood to overlook the productions flaws. Given that it's the first movie for the director and writer the next one could well be better as they all learn the craft.

I give it 6.5 for an interesting concept and addressing non obvious plot points.

Frozen but thawed towards the end

[Xcstacy · 4/10 · 20 June 2009]

An Indie film for first time movie this got out of it what was put inn. This won't make your top 10 movie of the year but it also will not make your bottom 10 (unless you watch only 20 movies).

I went into this movie with no expectations as I had not heard of it before watching, so I did not really know what it was about. I read a short 1 sentence summary prior so I knew that time travel was involved and that is what initially got me interested. The premise of this movie and overall idea and story behind it is very interesting. It is nothing truly original it has been thought of before however I suppose not exactly ever done this way.

Robert Harriell is the only reason I kept watching this movie, he did a fantastic job playing his role, Ella Rae Peck also did a fantastic job as Emma. I feel that they carried this movie and they are the only people that I did not want to take my shoe off and throw at them because of how unbelievable some of the others were.

I don't have much else to say; besides it was an okay movie, I enjoyed it but it won't be everybody's cup of tea, it does move forward fairly slow and the humour in it is very dry and most may not find it too funny. Great first movie for the majority of the cast and crew who worked on this.

~XTC

Freezer Burn... Human Popsicle

[juliankennedy23 · 7/10 · 20 June 2009]

Freezer Burn: 7 out of 10: A low budget charmer is the best way to describe Freezer Burn. It has some pretty good naturalistic performances as well as some pretty funny writing.

It isn’t perfect by any means and some parts, in particular the ending, fall a little flat. It is also a low budget movie, with all the limitations that come with that. If you can look past the lack of polish, there are some very fun and entertaining bits in here.

Ella Rae Peck gives a charming, and most importantly believable, performance as the objet d'underage de passion. Her smile brightens up the screen. (Great now I sound like the protagonist). She is however a realistic character and not some fantasy or tragic Hollywood concoction.

Michael Consiglio gives the other standout performance as the wheelchair bound lab assistant. He reminds me of Nicholas Brendon (Xander) on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He has that great ability to turn a silly throwaway line into something genuinely funny.

Overall, I had a fun time. The film has a great tone. Kind of silly but also surprisingly realistic compared to a more polished Hollywood film. I certainly recommended it for both Sci-fi and low budget fans.

what was this i just saw?

[therefdotcom · 2/10 · 30 May 2009]

i watched this movie yesterday because i saw that it had a rating of over 8 points here on IMDb and because it was categorized as comedy/romance/sci fi. both factors combined is usually a mixture that can not fail my taste. my mistake though was that i did not notice that only 34 people rated it so far, but i just noticed that today before i started writing this review.

OK, let's sedate this without revealing too much.

to my surprise this started off as a low-cost movie in a rather amateurish lab environment. the acting did not start off as bad as i expected, but the main protagonists felt somewhat hateable from the very beginning. anyway, i didn't want to fall into judgement too soon and watched it through the end before making my mind up.

the story of a guy who finds the formula for successful cryogenics in a lab that has like $65 dollars of equipment in it, who gets oppressed by his tyrannic wife, riduculed by his wheelchaired and completely soul-less assistant, and falls in love with a 14 year old girl he barely knows and thereby decides to freeze himself in a fridge until she's his age, can only described as "odd".

there are some alight ideas in there, which could have worked as an alright movie if done with a much better script. the final product does not really qualify as a comedy and even less as a scifi/romantic comedy. there is really nothing funny about it. also there is nothing in it that would even remotely pass as romantic. the characters are just sad, very sad. every single one of them and the whole plot line is just tragic. you don't manage to get any feelings for the characters, neither good or bad. it is more like observing the movie than feeling some kind of connection to the protagonist.

since the storyline is so out-of-this world they should have used this material and make 90% of all scenes completely over-the-top to give it the needed comedic spin, that this movie is so clearly missing.

this wasn't a terribly agonizing experience, since it didn't offend me in any way, but it was extremely boring and very misleading. i was expecting to get some good laughs out of it, or at least some chuckles, but as already stated, this is not a comedy.

The title says it all

[charlytully · 6/10 · 17 March 2011]

If a person were in northern Japan now, cold and starving after the tsunami, and they could get their hands on some warm hamburger or pork loin, they'd probably wolf it down--even if it had FREEZER BURN. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man gets to write the movie reviews; in the realm of very low-budget, low-actors-on-the-totem pole, backyard special effects science fiction films, FREEZER BURN is slightly better than some.

In this movie, acting performances fluctuate between understated and WAY over the top, even by the same cast member. While there may be a couple almost memorable lines of dialog (the best one involves wife Blake saying "whittle" and husband Virgil hearing "wittle" early on), most of it is quite lame. So this spin on ENCINO MAN or SLEEPER comes off as a pale, if mildly diverting, imitation.

wasted potential

[movieman_kev · 3/10 · 23 September 2009]

Not to be confused with the utterly awful horror/comedy "Freezer Burn: The Invasion of Laxdale", this film has Virgil Stamp, a scientist experimenting with cryogenics, deciding to test it on himself after his marriage turns sour and he develops an affection for his wife's 14 year old student, Emma, after growing enamored with her paintings. (his wife understandable throws a fit and destroys his previous research when she finds out). His plan is to thaw himself back out after Emma gets to be the age he was before freezing himself. Needless to say, things don't go as planned.

The acting in the film is a tad sub-par. That and the numerous badly done 'winks' to other films made me not like it as much as I could have. The film also feels like it could've been edited down a bit more as it drags in parts. The plot itself was interesting (hence why i Netflix-ed this) but the execution left me wanting.

My Grade: D+

DVD Extras: 23 minute short film: Final defrostification of Virgil Stamp (an extremely edited cut of the film which actually plays better); gag reel; posters; trailer for this movie; and trailers for "He's on my Mind" &"the GARTH Method""

a rarity in today's cinematic crap-storm...

[sanborneo · 8/10 · 8 September 2009]

i watched this under a friend's recommendation, & my only problem was, given the title, the obviously low budget, & the fact it involved scientists working in a cheapo lab, i naturally assumed it was going to morph into some sort of sci-fi (that's right, we still spell it that way, SyFy!!) horror film--the Rampage of the Hideous Freezer Demon, or something. but once i got past that, & settled into the film's rhythms, i was pleasantly surprised. i won't bother w/a plot synopsis, but suffice-to-say, it's a very original product, a light but dark anti-romantic comedy. sure, you can laugh that the petri dishes they use in their "lab" are in fact tin-foil take-out containers, but as a veteran of many even LOWER budget productions than this, i can tell you that the level of direction, writing, acting & the consistency of tone they achieve is extremely difficult under those circumstances, & all the more impressive for it. keep your mind open, look past the obvious short-comings, & you'll have a good time most Hollywood dreck can't provide...

Pedophilia and Independent Film

[undercover_at_the_movies · 2/10 · 29 October 2010]

Freezer Burn directed by Charles Hood sounds like a good movie. A scientist falls for a younger girl and he decides to freeze himself so that he can wake up and be with her in the future. This was an interesting enough synopsis for me to place this in my Netflix Instant Queue. I would come to immediately regret this decision.

This movie is beyond indie; it walks the delicate line between an indie film and guerrilla-style shooting. In general, this is not something that I mind; I welcome indie films wholeheartedly. However, adding this camera-work to terrible acting and an inane script made this movie unbearable to watch.

It opens on Virgil and Rex, two scientists working on a way to preserve things in ice so that they might wake up later fully functional and just as they were before. After many unimportant plot points and absurd dialogue, Virgil eventually meets a 14-year-old student of his wife's and immediately falls into pedophilic love with her. He decides erratically that he will test his new scientific theories by freezing himself in order to wait for her to be the same age as he is. As you might have guessed, this plays out as the stupidest romantic ploy in the history of film. Once Virgil is awoken in the future, this movie really takes a turn for the worst. Nonetheless, I will not ruin the end for you as you may want to torture yourself by watching this later.

I was slightly reminded of another cinematic pedophile, Lester Burnham from American Beauty. Kevin Spacey played that role beautifully, to where you were almost rooting for this poor man to hook up with the high school girl. It was to the point that you hardly even noticed it was a pedophilic crush. This was certainly not the case with Virgil. Throughout the whole film, all you can think about is how creepy and disturbing his immediate love for this ninth grader is. As well, Virgil took it much further than Lester did by freezing himself and forfeiting fifteen years of his life to attempt to be with (legally) a girl he has only met twice.

There was literally nothing redeeming about this film. The acting was awful; the script was full of plot twists that made no sense and sad attempts at quippy dialogue; and the camera-work was just appalling, appearing to not have any control over lighting whatsoever. I have sat here and endeavored to think of anything positive I could say about the film; all I could come up with is that I am thankful no one in this movie has yet to do another project. Another encouraging note is that this movie gave me hope. If these people can make a horrible movie as such and get it onto DVD and even to Netflix, then maybe I, too, can one day shoot a movie worthy of Netflix.

If you are an indie filmmaker yourself, then you may be able to watch this and identify with someone's first try at film. Or you may, like me, watch it and become mortified that this script was able to get any recognition, let alone money to endorse turning it into a movie.