Hours later,
they finish traveling the twenty feet between the truck and the chattel.
Therein, they try to understand why the skier is killing them all. Perhaps
it's because they aren't following the rules on the pamphlet, Pike
suggests. An interesting suggestion, but that doesn't explain why the
skier did the sheriff in. Cole glances at the pamphlet and quickly
dismisses the idea, replacing it with another idea: let's go take care of
the punk with the axe wound in his thigh. He and Pike haul Skyler into the
other room, and in the meantime, Pike asks Kimberly to go scrounge up some
weapons. Well, she found a fire poker. That's a start.
In a moment
of pure sadism, Cole and Pike decide that instead of bandaging and
applying antiseptic to Skyler's wound, they should try to suture it by
putting one of Robyn's earrings through it. Man, you guys are heartless. I
mean sure, I hate the guy, but you're supposed to be his friends.
At this
point, Kimberly has gone completely insane. For some reason, she has taken
off her winter coat and pants and has stripped down to her leopard
skivvies. Still, she at least maintains a cool enough head to keep looking
for weapons. Her search takes her to a door sealed with a padlock, which
she removes by clumsily wiggling her poker beneath it. Don't know why she
wanted to get into that door, but she gets in all the same.
Beyond the door is a small basement, complete with broken radio equipment
and a closet with "batteries" written on the door. You know what that
means…
That's
right, bodies. The other two snowboarders from Chris's story. It's
strange, though; despite the fact that they were kept in virtually the
same freezing conditions as the little girl's corpse, these have actually
rotted away quite a bit. Ah, the mysteries of life. The sight is enough to
send Kimberly streaking back into the room where Cole and Pike are
treating Skyler. She relates what she saw, and Pike upbraids her, saying
"next time we're being stalked by a serial killer, do not go into the
basement." Yeah, and keep your pants on, both literally and figuratively.
Pike and
Cole head outside to try and fix… whatever the hell the skier did to their
truck. During their inspection of the engine, Pike decides to plant on
Cole to show him how she feels. Then, goofy smiles, awkward dialogue, blah
blah blah stupid crap. More importantly, Pike's cursory inspection of the
engine has told her exactly what's wrong with it and how to fix it.
More bad
news: the skier has a key to the back door, and the guard that Pike and
Cole left isn't exactly doing her job. The skier sneaks right past her and
heads up the stairs to finish off Skyler. Finally. Along the way, the
skier grabs a ski pole for use as a weapon. A ski pole. There isn't a
single skier in this whole goddamn chattel, and yet there's a pair of ski
poles just sitting in the hallway! I just… let's move on…
"You know you can't kill me, cuz I'm still a virgin."
Skyler is
not at all worried about being totally incapacitated with a murderer
standing in front of him. Quite the contrary, he pulls out that stupid
camera and starts filming. In response, the skier stabs the camera. It
certainly succeeds in breaking the camera lens, but not much else. Good
job, masked killer.
Being the
good sport that he is, Skyler puts the camera back up to his eye. The
skier then puts a little more weight behind the thrust, and the pole
pushes through the rest of the camera and into Skyler's eye. I'm sorry,
that should have read "and into Skyler's eye???" Again, it makes no sense,
but all the same, I'm glad he's dead.
Skyler's
last hurrah comes when, after falling out of bed, the cassette port of his
camera pops open and spews forth a ludicrous amount of "blood." The thick,
blood-like liquid oozes into a nearby heating vent, and drips down onto
Kimberly's face on the floor below, pushing her further over the edge.
Realizing that she's next, Kimberly bolts. Not outside, but straight into
a closet in the kitchen. At first, I balked at her decision to hide rather
than flee outside, but then I remembered that since she chose not to keep
her winter gear on, she probably would have frozen to death. In any case,
there's another surprise waiting for her in the closet…
It's good
old Chad from the very beginning of the film. Kimberly isn't too stuck up
to share a closet with a corpse, and so she does. The skier passes by,
thinking that the basement should be checked first. Kimberly uses the
extra time to grab the walkie talkie and give Cole a call. Unfortunately,
she didn't count on the volume of the return call being so loud, and the
skier is alerted to her presence when Cole responds, "KIMBERLY, IS THAT
YOU?" Think, you fucking moron! Who the hell else could it possibly be
calling you on a walkie talkie? Is Pike giving you a courtesy call from
the front of the truck? Dammit all.
Initially, the skier tries to open the door of the closet, but Kimberly
pulls the door the other way, foiling the skier's attempt. Time for Plan
B: punch a hole in the door with the fire poker that Kimberly dropped at
some point. That goes over a little better. The skier makes a small hole
in the upper portion of the door, and Kimberly falls to the ground
screaming like she's going into labor. Then, sheer humor:
The skier's exuberant stabbing accidentally gets the poker stuck in Chad's
head, and Kimberly gets a neat little show as the head is thrust back and
forth in front of her as the skier frantically tries to extricate the
poker. Eventually, the head does come loose, but the frustration is so
great that the skier slams an elbow repeatedly against the door, tries to
reach the inside doorknob through the hole, and finally gives up and walks
away. Hey genius, how about you twist the knob and pull? It's not like she
locked it or anything. Oh well. Why should I expect things to make sense
at this point?
Meanwhile, Cole thinks he heard Kimberly's voice on the radio, but he's
not entirely sure, so he lets it go and continues helping Pike with the
truck. Kimberly, believing that the murderous skier must have gone far
away, makes a break for it, only to discover that said killer was only a
few feet away, waiting for her to exit the unlocked closet. Too bad. On a
final note, as Kimberly drops her walkie talkie, Cole once again shouts,
"KIMBERLY, IS THAT YOU?" Not anymore, stupid.
The second time he has to ask who's calling him really gets him thinking
that he should go check on his ex-girlfriend. Lucky for him, there's a
bloody streak leading right to her. He finds her in the basement, and in
her current state, it's all she can do to utter her last words to him: "I
never loved you." Ouch. Still, what do you expect to hear from a woman
killed by your stupidity?
While Cole gets the bad news from his ex, the skier blocks the basement
door with some kind of shelving, rather than simply clobbering that
nimrod. No, this sort of thing must be done in a certain order, it seems,
and now it's Pike's turn. She did manage to single-handedly fix the truck,
but just as she starts it, the skier tries to climb in. Tries. A quick
throw into reverse, and the skier is down.
Hey, Pike says to herself, I could run this jerk over right now and end
this pathetic hoedown. Good plan, bad execution. She lets the skier stand
back up and slams on the accelerator. Unfortunately, the skier is able to
jump to one side, and Pike goes on to smash into a derelict snowplow. The
wreck itself isn't fatal, but it does give the skier enough time to break
the window and nail Pike in the head.
Cole finally manages to get past the shelving, and arrives just in time to
find that there's a new corpse snow angel. Geez, you just can't get a
break, can you buddy? Thoroughly pissed, Cole does the only thing he can
think of: he hops on the chairlift and starts ranting.
A paraphrase would not do the rant justice, so here it is in its entirety:
"I am so irresponsible! Complete lack of responsibility here! I have no
idea of the proper loading technique, and I shouldn't even be using this
equipment unsupervised! Look! Check it out! No safety strap! I have no
device to prevent runaway equipment, and I'm littering! I never take
responsibility for people ahead of me on the trail! Where the hell are
you! Come and get me! I HATE SKIERS!!!"
Bravo, Cole. Too bad that the chairlift can be started, and stopped, with
the push of a button. After the skier hits the emergency stop button, Cole
lets out a concerned, "oops." Oops indeed.
Bad news, buddy: now the skier's got a snowmobile, and a gun! Cole
prepares to jump off the chairlift, gathering his courage by thinking of
the X-games. I don't know much about extreme sports, but I'm guessing that
no one ever jumped off a chairlift and into a pine tree, but that's just
what Cole does.
Luck continues to be with Cole as the skier comes to investigate said
tree. Cole tackles the skier off his snowmobile and grabs the rifle. Let's
just see who this gunman on the snowy knoll really is…
Yes, it is Bud. He explains that snowboarders killed his wife and his
daughter through their inability to follow the skiing guidelines. I
personally don't know all of them, but I don't think they cover drunk
driving, so I don't know why he blames them for the wife's death. The
thing is, Bud says he was only trying to scare them, and that he hasn't
killed anyone. Cole doesn't buy it, and tries to shoot Bud. I just assumed
he was a really terrible shot, but it turns out that there were only
blanks in the gun. Of course, a stiff blow with the rifle butt works just
as well. With that taken care of, Cole puts his board back on and heads
back down the mountain.
Whoops! Looks like Cole's knockout swing didn't do the trick, and now the
chase is on! You know, I hadn't thought to mention this earlier, and
frankly I don't know why I bother to now, but the board Cole's using is
the one the skier sabotaged, and it's still broken when Cole rides the
chairlift up the mountain, and yet now it appears to be working just fine.
You know what? Fuck it. We are moving on…
Down they go, back and forth, left and right, and then, the end of the
chase:
Bud inadvertently drives right into some neck-level wiring strung across
the curve in the path. No, don't give me that look. There is no
explanation. Bud is dead, ok? And Cole… he gives his walkie talkie one
last try, but it's all too apparent that everyone is dead. Plus, Pike
screwed up the truck, so there'll be no easy drive home.
Cole's hitchhiking doesn't go so well. I can't believe he still brought
that damn board with him. His entire clique was wiped out, and he's still
thinking about shredding. Then again, he probably thinks the board is
somehow enchanted, seeing as it did fix itself back at Rocky Summit.
Regardless, after an unknown amount of time, he arrives at Bud's bar. The
lights are on, the doors are unlocked, but there's nobody around. Not only
that, but the phones are dead, too. Very peculiar. Perhaps the answer lies
out the back way…
Nope, just certain doom. Oh no, Cole, you locked the door behind you!
Moron. And those walls of packed snow are too steep to climb, I guess. In
desperation, he hurls his board at the grinder, but all that does is
dispel my magic board theory. Wait, who's that behind the wheel?
Good lord, it's the skier, and that asshole driver! How ironic; I thought
the skier was dead, and the driver alive. Oh cruel fate! But who is the
skier? Who, dammit, who!!?
"Snowboarders off my mountain!"
It's bug-eyed Shelley! I guess she wanted revenge more than her crazy
father. She wedges her ski pole against the accelerator and climbs out of
the cab to gloat over her last kill, shouting "who's the shredder now,
huh?" You know, I'm perfectly ok with this. Just kill Cole end this damn
movie, I thought. Oh no, it wouldn't be that simple (or logical).
It's Pike. I don't know what to say, really. She rose from the dead, found
a shotgun somewhere, and caught up to Cole just in a nick of time.
Fantastic. Her first shot catches Shelley in the shoulder, knocking her
off the snowblower.
Shelley remains undaunted by her gaping wound, and starts forward to
strangle Cole with her bare hands. Too bad that Pike has another round in
the chamber.
The first time you saw that thing, you knew someone was getting ground up.
It just took a while. With Shelley having been turned into chunky womanchowder, Pike climbs into the cab and turns off the snowblower.
Cole has roughly the same expression I had when I saw Pike suddenly
appear. He remarks, "I'm so glad you're not did." She responds, "me too."
Good one, guys. Good one. With all the bad guys out of the way, the two of
them climb over the snowblower and into the truck that Pike wrecked
earlier. Cole gets the last line in the movie, making a last crack about
Pike being a bisexual. Pike pumps the shotgun, but sadly does not use it
to wipe the smile off Cole's face. The end.
Boy, talk about your surprise endings! I totally didn't not expect Pike to
become a zombie and save the day!! Greg Hudson, you are a genius!!!
Seriously, though, this movie was complete and utter shit. I'd like to
thank the Internet Movie Database for showing me that no one involved with
this film can claim to have an active film career, and for reminding me of
where I've seen Scott Weinger before. Hell, I just figured he was Kirk
Cameron, but how wrong I was. Hopefully, he will die on the set of his
next crummy straight-to-video shame piece. In short, I give this movie one
Creepy Shelly out of five.
out of
