Once again, here are my top 5 scary movies that take place in snowy settings:
1) The Shining
2) The Thing
3) Misery
4) Ravenous
5) Black Christmas
To be honest, those are the only ones that I can think of that I've seen... other than The Grey, which wasn't really scary and I really wanted the wolves to win. Oh, and Fargo, which wasn't scary either, just all kinds of brilliant.
What makes cold, snowy setting so effective in scary movies is often the choice one has to make to either die by the hands of the killer or to die by the hands of nature - neither sounds pleasant. Cold, isolated settings are also a good backdrop for madness.
Live-In Fear is the story of four 20somethings who go to Utah for a skiing vacation to escape the rat race of Los Angeles. What they find or what finds them is a shitstorm of weird cultish mayhem, murder and mutilation.
Utah. I spent a week in Utah skiing and stayed at a rundown lodge halfway up a mountain in Park City. It was beautiful and cold and we had to hitch a ride on a snowmobile to get to and from the bars, which closed at 10:00 pm. After that we found all sorts of trouble to get into. My only other memories are of the watery draught beer and the bland and doughy pizza.
The trailer for Live-In Fear begins with one of the group talking about the legend of a bloody bride - a sort of Bloody Mary, Candyman type ghost story one might tell to a child. He tells the story on the way to the cabin in the woods.
I like cabin in the woods stories. Regardless of whether the threat is human, supernatural, physical or psychological, remoteness lends itself so well to a horror story. So, if madness can overtake a rational mind while on vacation, imagine what madness can do to one who chooses the remote setting as a permanent home.
I may be wrong (I often am but don't mind, really) but Live-In Fear appears to examine a sort of collision of madness. The collision being the tired L.A. tourists who just want to get away to a quiet, secluded place VS. the locals whose cabin fever took over long before the tourists arrived.
Indeed, the cabin in the woods is a common theme, but while one can judge such films as cliche, the horror genre is built on such themes and at its core is, fear. The manifestation of such fear, whether the threat is human, supernatural, real or perceived is the thrill that we fans expect when we watch such films.
You don't need a big budget to create fear. You just need to create fear from a threat that the audience can believe.
As a trailer, Live-In Fear had all the elements of a good, scary movie. I'll just need to see it to confirm....
Um, Maria, please send it...
Check out the trailer for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
The film’s IMDB page is http://www.imdb.com/title/
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