Watch Below Zero For Free

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Jack is an aspiring screenwriter whose goal is to write a movie about a man locked in a freezer. To do this, he needs to be locked in a freezer himself, and he travels to a remote area to do this. It is already cold where Jack goes, but he needs to be even colder. Penny, the quirky woman who picks him up, has an accent straight out of the movie "Fargo", and a son who won't talk; his father took off years ago because he couldn't accept a son who was "different". Whatever Jack needs, she will provide; Jack's agent has provided all the directions. They go to an old slaughterhouse and Jack goes right to work in the freezer, which Penny locks unexpectedly. Jack wants out, but Penny has been told he has to stay there for five days. It isn't cold, though ... yet.As Jack works, we see the movie that he is writing. It's quite dreary; everything looks green, while in the "real world" of the freezer, everything looks blue. Frank (Jack) drives a tow truck and his friend Marty works at the garage. According to the credits, the same actor playing Marty is supposedly Jack's agent, but I don't recall seeing him. Anyway, Frank has an accident inspired by an incident with cows that Jack and Penny had. He has to go in search of a phone, and there isn't much around. He finds an isolated dump of a butcher shop which looks quite familiar, and a demented butcher named Gunnar violently attacking his meat. Gunnar has a creepy son who won't talk. Frank manages to find the phone and call Marty. When Marty calls back, Gunnar angrily says Frank isn't there; he believes this to be true, as Frank is hiding. As Jack makes script changes, we see the film "rewind", and other techniques are used later for rewrites. Occasionally we return to the "real world", where Jack faces one crisis after another. He ends up using a great-looking old typewriter for his writing at one point. Eventually, Jack is under pressure to produce as the thermostat starts getting lowered.Back in the movie within a movie, Frank discovers Paige, who is being held prisoner. And Marty shows up eventually but doesn't exactly have a positive experience with Gunnar.We go through some amazing plot twists in both the "real world" and the movie within a movie. I found it funny when the characters had to figure out what to do next and ended up looking through the pages Jack had typed. And it's not the only time they break the fourth wall.In a flashback we do learn about the other character which the actor playing Gunnar was. He's very different but still scary looking.The ending was quite unexpected (to me, anyway) but very satisfying.The movie within a movie is somewhat effective as a B horror movie. Michael Berryman is a very frightening and intimidating villain, yet loving as a father, in his own way. The young actor quite creepy for a kid. Kristin Booth is very convincing when she is cold, but frightened? Not as talented in that situation. She's better in her "real world" role.I've heard the name Edward Furlong. He's pretty good, I guess. Nothing overly distinctive.I felt comfortable with Michael Eisner. He was sort of the voice of reason when he could be. The "real world" has its own interesting suspense qualities. And there is occasional comedy in both. This most definitely isn't for kids. The sound went out a lot since this was broadcast TV. I know what that means. And that's just the bad language. Maybe when cleaned up for TV, some kids can handle it.Is this any good? Well, it's different.

The basic premise of the movie is that of a horror story writer seeking some inspiration for writing his latest story, by going to a rural farm where he'll have some peace and quiet, and a prearranged eerie atmosphere given that he'll stay inside the farm's slaughterhouse. As he'll soon find out, he got more than he bargained for. Nothing too original about the storyline, but it's always a good starting point for a horror movie.The problem was that the story didn't develop in a coherent way and many of the subsequent twists and turns in the plot seemed both trivial and unnecessary. There was no real moment of horror nor was there any eerie atmosphere throughout the movie. Many horror movies get away with bad scripts thanks to good directing, where a build-up of atmosphere and the occasional horror moment draw you into the story and make you forget about any plot holes or incoherence.The problem here was that there was no real atmosphere. Partly, this was due to bad character casting. Miss "piggy laugh" was way too young and ordinary-looking for her role as some redneck farm lady, and the main character seemed more like a bored heavy metal-loving teenager than a professional horror writer fighting his inner daemons. Even so, the director could have saved the day with some "camera magic", adding a few extra flashback moments here and there and backing up the dialogs with fitting background music, just to get some atmosphere going. That's what separates good directors from bad, good directors don't just follow the script as a textbook manual and leave it up to the actors to make or break the movie, especially not when it's plain obvious that the main actors are unable to carry out their parts properly.

BELOW ZERO is a thinking person's mystery horror. A scriptwriter, Jack the Hack, has writer's block and arranges to be locked in a slaughterhouse freezer until he comes up with a script. Believe it or not, scriptwriter Signe Olynyk tells me she also did this when writing the movie. On screen, the story is dramatised for us as Jack writes, so we have two on-screen narratives: Jack's world (think, Fargo) and that of the alter ego in his story (think Saw). As he considers various re-writes, the story within a story changes. But a third story is at hand: that from Jack's own psyche. His basic plot, surprise surprise, is someone accidentally being locked in a freezer, in a building owned by a serial killer. But, if you can stand back from the subsequent on screen gore, there's maybe time to work out what's really happening! This Kaufmanesque horror story keeps you on your toes all the way through. Signe doesn't recommend new writers try the freezer trick at home, but she does run a scriptwriters' workshop, Pitchfest (www.pitchfest.com), and invites any budding writers reading this to get in touch with her.

A slow burning thriller. When I found out that this film was written by a writer (Signe Olynyk) who suffered from writer's block and locked herself inside a freezer for 5 days I was instantly drawn in by her commitment to break through her dry spell. This film isn't autobiographical but it does hold some elements of truth to it. Namely the writer Jack (Edward Furlong) locks himself inside a freezer to free himself from writer's block while hoping to come up with a screenplay. Once the film kicks into gear as a member of the audience I had to ask myself why a guy would lock himself in a freezer without a proper toilet to crap in? The second thing I wondered is what Jack would do to his agent once he got out of the freezer. Would he sue his agent? The film deals with none of this. Want to learn about 'hacks' see this; What this film does deal with is what a screenwriter must visually see when the plot out a story. This is done by showing characters and events in the writer's life then being twisted and turned in his story and presented to us. The film has a very nice twist ending that will please the audience by taking them for a ride. Below Zero has snappy dialogue and excellent performances by Edward Furlong, Kristen Booth, and Michael Berryman. This is Edward Furlong's best movie in years. The main thrills come from the parts of the film in Jack's mind that give us nail biting suspense and brutality. It's a low budget slow burner for anyone who is more inclined to a well written dramatic piece instead of action packed horror film. Watch out for writer Signe Olynyk, she is a talent for the future.