Directed by Michael Cooney
Written by Jeremy Paige and Michael Cooney
Starring:
- Scott MacDonald as Jack Frost
- Christopher Allport as Sam Tiler
- Stephen Mendel as Agent Manners
- F. William Parker as Paul Davrow
- Eileen Seeley as Anne
- Rob LaBelle as Stone
- Zack Eginton as Ryan Tiler
- Jack Lindine as Jake Metzner
- Shannon Elizabeth as Jill Metzner
Rating: 
An artless potpourri of ’90s horror tropes confined in the unrepentant trashiness of the direct-to-video releases that plagued video stores during its heyday. No matter how much derision this outmoded pantomime of the slasher tradition has to face, it keeps finding ways to reinvent its dysfunctionality and reinvigorate its pragmatic amateurism by proving to its target audience that there’s no such thing as a genre-conscious flick that can get as outrageously self-aware as Michael Cooney’s Jack Frost.
There are ’90s B-movies self-aware of their milieu and paradigms reflecting being symptomatic of Scream’s meta-framework, but then there’s Jack Frost, which is the odd – and asymptomatic – case because it’s not the sort of meta horror where irony gravitates around a storytelling intertextuality nor is it referential or cognizant of the archetypal patterns of the genre. Jack Frost has the temerity to remain ever aware of how bad it is. Watching Christopher Allport hamming it up as the backwater town sheriff trying to take down a murderous snowman, you get the sense that it’s all intended to turn the proceedings into a slapstick shitshow. And the entire cast and film crew are also fully aware that nothing good – movie-wise – can come out of this abysmally trashy, amateurish movie. It is astonishingly awful. But something very cool happens when you have all these worthless components posing appallingly poorly as a movie, the comedic effect is fierce, almost relentless as it is peerlessly lousy and so damn proud of it. There is a morbid pleasure in witnessing this direct-to-video atrocity that feels like testifying to the pleasing serendipities behind the humor factor that can be encountered in this kind of marginalized moviemaking.
I can’t recall how many times this crass holiday slasher made me laugh as I watched its idiotic plot taking more and more farcical turns. Jack Frost (Scott MacDonald) is a serial killer in snow shape, after he was exposed to chemicals that dissolved him to the point of being sucked into the icy cold temperatures. Thus, becoming one with the snow. The storyline certainly needs no explanation, the filmmakers just need the most absurd of all mutant excuses to craft this snowy abomination and produce the goofiest slasher ever made in the 90’s. It has the implausibility of the Child’s Play sequels, the rapidity and cheesiness of a Goosebumps episode, and the horniness of the Tales from the Crypt TV series. Compounding this very nineties praxis are Jack Frost’s vulgarly punchy “The world’s most pissed-off snow cone!” one liners, clumsy characters galore, and amusingly sophomoric camerawork. And last but not least, new millennium teen comedy superstar Shannon Elizabeth in her film debut has the greatest sequence of the whole movie or maybe of her entire acting career, Jack Frost raping her with his carrot ranks among one of the funniest B-movie sequences I’ve ever seen. It’s impossible to call it so bad it’s good because it’s really so bad it’s awful, but I don’t see how otherwise it would have been any funnier, it’s hilarious just the way it is, awful.
