Chihiro works in Tokyo, seems to have a good life and is about to marry her colleague. But she also has a very dark past that comes knocking on her door one day. Five years ago, Chihiro was raped and filmed by three men, and now they have found her again, showing up in her home one by one, and once again sets the nightmare in motion. Driven to desperation, Chihiro murders them one after one and put their bodies in freezers, but with the last one overburdens the small apartments electrical system.
Freeze me is a movie that I personally have very mixed feelings about, but in the end, when thinking about it, it ranks pretty high. It's a horrible and pretty brutal film to have to sit through, at least early on in the movie, but it's also a flick that, with time, takes these feelings away and replaces them with a good feeling instead. In a way, it's kinda like with Irréversible, just for the fact that it starts off brutally and is hard to deal with, but gives a better feel and takes that negative atmosphere away the further it goes.
If you can make it, emotionally, through the first half-hour or so, then you'll be fine. It's that first third of the movie that is somewhat hard to sit through, and takes a lot of energy to watch, (that is if you're a person who actually cares about other people and don't want to see innocent people getting hurt). It deals with the subject of rape, and even though it's not super graphical, it's hard not to be affected by what goes on.
The viewer get to know Chihiro, a cute girl who seems to have a good life in Tokyo with a steady job in a bank office, and who is about to get married as well. But one day some punk comes knocking on her door and forces himself into her apartment. Apparently that guy, along with two other guys, raped Chihiro five years ago and now have looked her up, and are planning to do the same thing all over again.
 
This guy is a real a-hole and settles in Chihiro's apartment for days while waiting for the other two guys to arrive. He rapes her, beats her and does a lot of stupid things to ruin her life once again. What I had problems with here was, except for the fact of seeing a girl getting raped and beaten, that she just takes it, again and again. Ok if he would've had her locked up or something, but this whole thing goes on for days, and there are times were she could've easily escaped and called for help. At one time, her fiancé drops by to see what's wrong with her and why she's not coming to work, and the a-hole guy tells the fiancé about what he did to her in the past, and it all ends with the fiancé leaves her.
After a while though, she can't take it anymore and do what should've been done a long time ago. She kills the guy and hides his body in her freezer, and he stays there until the next guy shows up, and then the next. The rest is up to you to find out if you choose to watch Freeze Me, as I don't want to reveal everything. One big problem with this movie, or that is the main character Chihiro, is that even if you feel really sorry for her for a long tme during the movie, it's really hard to feel full sympathy at times as well as at most of the time, she shows no resistance at all. Don't get me wrong here, she's trapped in a corner and probably feels too ashamed to seek help from her fiancé or other people for that matter, but at times she doesn't seem to really care about what's going on, and does nothing to improve the situation. And even though she improves the situation later on, it's so much later on and it's very hard to relate or understand some of her actions inbetween.
For the sake of not sounding politically incorrect, I'm not gonna dive further into the subject. Watch it and judge for yourself. I liked the character that is Chihiro, even though it at the same time was very hard to relate to her. But this is a movie that of course can be interpret in different ways, and people will always have different views on the subject. But in the end, Takashi Ishii's film makes you think, and while it's mostly a drama and not really a horror flick, it's still scary, but not in a horror movie sense.
Freeze Me is a good flick that will make you think. It's not slow, but I couldn't say that it's the least fast-paced either. Even if it was somewhat hard to watch in the beginning, it got easier the longer you watched. Compared to other flicks that deals with rape, I guess it doesn't stand out that much, but still felt realistic at times, and so made it scarier than some other movies with the same theme. Compared to I Spit On Your Grave, it's much more brutal, but compared to Irréversible, it's a bit 'nicer' in the lack of a better word. Recommended, but at the same time, watch what you're getting yourself into.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Freezer
MOVIE YEAR: 2000
DIRECTOR: Takashi Ishii
WRITING CREDITS: Takashi Ishii
GENRE: Horror, Thriller, Drama
CAST: Harumi Inoue, Shingo Tsurumi, Kazuki Kitamura
COUNTRY: Japan
RUNTIME: 101 min
RATING: 8/10
Freeze Me Website/IMDB Click here
Freeze Me Trailer Click here
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