The Frozen Ground (2013) poster

The Frozen Ground (2013)

Rating:


USA. 2013.

Crew

Director/Screenplay – Scott Walker, Producers – Remington Chase, Randall Emmett, Jane Fleming, Curtis Jackson, Mark Ordesky & Jeff Rice, Photography – Patrick Murguia, Music – Lorne Balfe, Special Effects Supervisor – Damian Lund, Production Design – Clark Hunter. Production Company – Cheetah Vision Films/Emmett-Furla Films/Court Five/Envision Entertainment/K5 International/Picture Perfect Corporation/Voltage Pictures.

Cast

Nicolas Cage (Sergeant Jack Holcombe), Vanessa Hudgens (Cindy Paulson), John Cusack (Robert Hansen), Kevin Dunn (Lieutenant Bob Jent), Dean Norris (Sergeant Lyle Haugsven), Radha Mitchell (Allie Halcombe), Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson (Clete Jackson), Jodi Lyn O’Keefe (Chelle Ringell), Kurt Fuller (District Attorney Pat Clives), Brad William Henke (Carl Galenski), Gia Mantegna (Debbie Peters), Robert Forgit (Sergeant Wayne Von Clasen), Michael McGrady (Detective Gentile), Ryan O’Nan (Officer Gregg Baker)


Plot

Anchorage, Alaska, 1983. State trooper Sergeant Jack Holcombe investigates a series of women’s bodies found in the wilderness, having been shot. Holcombe is certain that these are the activities of a serial killer. He investigates and discovers a string of other murders with similar trademarks. As becomes apparent, the killer offers prostitutes money for a private modelling shoot, would imprison and rape them, and then takes them out into the wilderness on his private plane where he would hunt and kill them. Holcombe then finds Cindy Paulson, a seventeen-year-old prostitute who escaped from the killer’s plane. She identified the suspect as local businessman Robert Hansen but the original police investigation dismissed her complaint because she was a prostitute. Holcombe presses Cindy to leave prostitution behind and come forward to help the case. As Cindy is drawn back in by her pimp, Hansen begins following her and offers money for people to bring her to him. At the same time, Holcombe begins trailing Hansen to build a case.


The mid-2000s brought an interest in true-life serial killer films following popular hits such as Monster (2003) and Zodiac (2007). Amid this period, there was a host of other such films with the likes of Ed Gein (2000), Dahmer (2002), Nightstalker (2002), Ted Bundy (2002), Gacy (2003), Evilenko (2004), The Hillside Strangler (2004), Starkweather (2004), Karla (2006), Lonely Hearts (2006), Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007), The Alphabet Killer (2008), B.T.K. (2008), Drifter: Henry Lee Lucas (2009) and Freeway Killer (2010).. (For a more detailed listing of such films see True Crime Films).

The Frozen Ground tells the story of the apprehension of serial killer Robert Hansen (1939-2014). Hansen grew up in Iowa where he suffered acne that left him with facial scars. Growing up, he was bullied and teased about this, which led to his later arrest in 1960 for burning the school down. He moved to Anchorage, married and ran a bakery. He began killing in the early 1970s. His m.o. would he to take prostitutes for sex, rape and physically abuse them, and then fly them into the wilderness in his private plane where he would hunt and kill them.

Hansen was eventually convicted of four of the murders but is known to have killed at least seventeen – as part of his plea, he led investigators to the whereabouts of their remains – while the number is suspected to be as many as thirty. He was sentenced to a jail term of 461 years in 1984 but died after being in jail for twenty years. In an interesting trivia note, John E. Douglas, the creator of forensic profiling, was involved in the search for Hansen (although is not portrayed in the film). Hansen’s killer has informed a number of fictional killers in particular Clancy Brown’s Kurt Caldwell in Dexter: New Blood (2021-2).

Teenage prostitute Vanessa Hudgens and state trooper Nicolas Cage in The Frozen Ground (2013)
Teenage prostitute Cindy Paulson (Vanessa Hudgens) and state trooper Jack Holcombe (Nicolas Cage)
John Cusack as serial killer Robert Hansen in The Frozen Ground (2013)
John Cusack as serial killer Robert Hansen

The Frozen Ground is an okay Police Procedural. It follows the details of the investigation closely for the better part. The focus is mostly on Nicolas Cage’s detective following Hansen’s trail and trying to make the case. These scenes alternate with the story of escaped victim Vanessa Hudgens as she is being dragged back into the stripper (as opposed to hooker) lifestyle by her pimp and those offering her drugs. These scenes work okay but are nothing standout due to the fact that they are tried and true plot elements – the cop close to retirement who has the case he cannot let go; the cost on his personal life; the teen runaway struggling to get out of the game.

Contrasted against this, there are occasional scenes featuring John Cusack’s Hansen, although only one scene where we see him taking girls into the wilderness in his plane and hunting them. While I don’t have a detailed account of the Hansen case to hand, my suspicion is that the scenes in the middle of the film where Hansen doggedly pursues Vanessa Hudgens and pays people to bring her to him have been created for dramatic purposes – there is certainly no record of anything like this in any of the accounts of the Hansen case I have read.

Nicolas Cage plays the lead detective. This was made just before Cage went into his crazy man phase and it is he at his most hangdog and empathetically sincere as he pleads with Vanessa Hudgens to stay off the street and with his superiors to allow him to make the case. Vanessa Hudgens was pegged as a teen star on the basis of High School Musical (2006) and subsequent singing career and this was her first serious dramatic roles. John Cusack certainly gets the look of Hansen from the photos. The film’s best scenes come towards the end where we have a determined Nicolas Cage trying to push to get a confession or anything he can use out of Cusack’s Hansen who calmly sits back denying everything.

This is the first film directed and written by Scott Walker who since appeared to disappear from the film industry before returning with the horror film The Tank (2023).


Trailer here


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