The New York Times by Dana Stevens
The violent scenes veer vertiginously between slapstick, soft-core pornography and raw documentary, leaving you repelled and confused, as well as fascinated.
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Japan · 2000
1h 41m
Director Takashi Ishii
Starring Harumi Inoue, Shingo Tsurumi, Kazuki Kitamura, Shunsuke Matsuoka
Genre Drama, Horror, Thriller
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Chihiro is raped by three men and it is captured on video camera. She leaves her hometown and prepares to marry a colleague five years later, when one of the rapists arrives and says the others are on their way. He behaves like her long-lost lover and mistreats her again. Chihiro takes revenge, kills him and puts him in a freezer. The other rapists are awaiting a similar fate...
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The New York Times by Dana Stevens
The violent scenes veer vertiginously between slapstick, soft-core pornography and raw documentary, leaving you repelled and confused, as well as fascinated.
New York Daily News by Jack Mathews
Ishii instills this unpleasantness with some Hitchcockian black humor.
With this perceptive, however bloody, film, Ishii makes it disturbingly clear that a culturally instilled sense of shame and fear of being shunned mean that women like Chihiro are doubly victimized, both by their attackers and the society that should protect them.
Village Voice by Michael Atkinson
Ishii's rough-hewn film may be the nastiest entry in its dubious but resonant subgenre since "I Spit on Your Grave." It's a black pearl for anyone who likes a little existential psychosis with their semi-softcore exploitation.
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
The whole movie plays like an improbable blend of "Repulsion," "High Noon" and the archetypal low-budget rape/revenge shocker "I Spit on Your Grave." Queasy audiences beware, but midnight-movie bookers take note.
With a stronger actress who could have been in greater command of the character, Freeze Me would have been a cold-hearted masterpiece rather than the okay thriller it turned out.
Comfortable with the inherent contradictions, Ishii throws all sexual politics to the wind in his highly stylized, fearlessly gratuitous fantasy, an unsettling mix of titillation, morality, victimization, and empowerment.
All this could've collapsed into empty shocks if not for Inoue's gripping performance as an exasperated single woman who senses her happiness slipping away with each vengeful blow.
Most people only use 10% of their brains. She unlocks the full 100% – and the powers that come with it.