1 gibble out of 5

Director: Robert Lee

I understand that you can’t expect much from low-budget high-spectacle movies, but perhaps it’s ‘Absolute Zero’s’ willingness to ignore itself that makes it even less tolerable than the norm.

So scientist Jeff Fahey is explaining to some suits that his team’s Absolute Zero experiments are going well, and then his slimy un-scientist boss promises that such research will be helpful for the military.  Fahey storms out in non-military sciency protestations, only to be sent to Antarctica one scene and no transition later to meet up with a crew studying some drastic temperature swings.  The film takes a few moments to establish some names and faces.  And up to this point – it’s tolerable.  Again, not expecting much, and Fahey’s got a reliable face and voice for this kind of stuff, and the introduction to the Antarctica team, while rushed, leads into some seemingly worthwhile dynamics with people attempting to study the ice in their own specialized way.

Then, hot damn, a huge snowstorm hits and everything goes to shitty shit.  What I’m not criticizing: the low-budget presentation.  It doesn’t look or feel very cold, and when people start dying, it gets silly.  Fine.  The movie starts to give away its ability to not care by having questionably ‘scientific’ decisions made by scientists… but, again, low expectations.    What I will criticize: Fahey gets stuck inside a cave with another scientist.  He discovers some interesting cave drawings that add a bit more potential plot direction.  The movie seems to be heading in a different direction than once thought… perhaps Fahey will be unraveling some Absolute Zero mystery from inside this cave, struggling to survive during a storm…

…Until one scene later when he’s back in Miami, no worse for wear.  “Oh, hey, my whole crew died and I was totally stuck in a cave.  But I had a nice flight.”  Put all of the inaccuracies to the “science” aside, put some of the hammy-ness aside, and that’s what kills Absolute Zero – the wayward subplotting that doesn’t seem to be there for any reason.  By the time we get to the inevitable freeze-over of the world, these random bits compound our character’s decisions to the point of utter irrelevancy.  They don’t move the story along, they don’t make any sense, they’re just written in because no one took them out.

This muddled sensibility is especially apparent during a “thrilling” scene where the group must go outside into the freeze to cross from one part of a building to another.  The scene has no sense of space and the characters are all suited such that they are mostly unrecognizable.  I thought someone died who hadn’t, and I couldn’t really understand why some characters were doing what they were doing.

Besides random viewing, I’m not sure I understand the who what where and why of these types of films, who they’re marketed to and why people watch them.  Regardless, they’re made for some on-paper justifiable reason, and for those who are planning to watch Absolute Zero specifically, there are better examples from the genre.

He looks like he's warning us, but what could he be... Oh, right. Don't watch this movie.

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