Freezer finds Dylan McDermott locked in a freezer. And that’s about it. It’s a bland B-movie with some hilariously bad dialogue.
The film, directed by Oscar nominated cinematographer Mikael Salomon, has McDermott playing Robert Saunders, a man the Russian mob assumes stole $8 million. So, they lock him in a freezer, beat him up a couple of times and then there’s an obvious twist at the end.
Yuliya Snigir plays Alisa, the woman in the bunch who may have a thing for Robert. There’s also your token second tier American actor paired with McDermott, Twilight actor Peter Facinelli. He has a small role as Mr. Exposition, showing up as a fatally wounded cop who tells Robert all about the mob.
Andrey Ivchenko and Milan Malisic round out the main cast, playing typical baddies. Ivchenko is the muscle man, while Malisic is the crazy, trigger-happy small guy.
Freezer does play out like a staged play, as it does take place only in one setting - a freezer in New York City. But Salomon fails to make the audience feel claustrophobic, robbing the movie of suspense. It just feels like this is the largest freezer ever and it’s even crazier when you see where the freezer really is.
Anchor Bay’s Blu-ray release is a pretty standard affair. The bonus materials amount to around 10 minutes in total of the cast and crew talking about how great working on the movie is. A two-minute featurette is listed as an “interview” with Salomon, but in reality, it’s just more quotes from the crew about him. A DVD and Ultraviolet code are also included.
Freezer is a quickie genre movie that misses its chances to be a good thriller. McDermott is doing his best, but the material lets him down. If you’re interested, wait until it hits Netflix.