Sub Zero (2005)

(On TV, February 2020) There are some solid theories about attachment that state that exposure is a bigger contributor to relationships than shared interests. Maybe there’s something similar at work in determining whether you’re likely to watch a movie: Will you make an extraordinary effort to watch an acclaimed masterpiece, or will you settle for what’s right there on the Cable TV schedule? I’m mentioning this because, on purely rational grounds, there are no reasons whatsoever to watch Sub Zero. It’s a low-budget made-for-DVD Canadian thriller that shamelessly rips off better films (Cliffhanger, Vertical Limit, etc.) and doesn’t have a single original thought or line of dialogue. You can gather most of this from the TV Guide logline, and a look at the film’s trailer will only confirm it with bombast. But here’s the thing: It’s a Canadian production, which means that it is a reliable filler for any Cable TV channel eager to meet those Canadian Content minimum requirements. I must have resisted seeing Sub Zero for months or even years before it ground me down and I finally gave in to my nagging curiosity. While the result is noticeably worse than the big-budget thrillers that inspired it, Sub Zero is actually… better than you’d expect from a cut-rate mockbuster. The plot is serviceable (if wildly contrived), there’s some style to the directing and while the CGI is 2005-rough, the production values are surprisingly decent for a straight-to-video film of its era. (I suspect that shooting in British Columbia and grabbing tons of stock footage did help.) Director Jim Wynorski is a veteran of the low-budget exploitation genre, and it shows both in the efficient use of resources and in the somewhat unambitious way the film is delivered. Now, I can’t be too sure about my own assessment here—watching the film felt like giving in to a particularly annoying kid constantly asking for attention, and so saying something like “eh, not bad” also feels like the price to pay to make it go away. But one thing is for sure: I’ve seen worse than Sub Zero as CanCon filler.