Three skiers are left abandoned on a ski lift in "Frozen."

Adam Green is a director with a vision – but he won’t be held to one genre – or a set of rules within a genre for that matter.

The filmmaker behind Hatchet and Hatchet II is also the vision behind Frozen (currently out on DVD). And Frozen is a frighteningly realistic movie about three skiers stuck on a chairlift after the ski patrols shutdown for the week believing the slopes have been cleared.

The director will tell you this isn’t horror and he’d be right.

“For me this is a terror movie, which is a little different,” Green points out. “It’s also a survival movie and it’s drama. It’s a slow build that really chills you to the core and it makes you think. That’s the glory of this movie and why the critics have responded so positively.”

He tells us that horror is usually not so character driven, which Frozen definitely is. However, he had to fight to keep the blood to a minimum. The distributors weren’t convinced a film like this would click with audiences – but it did. Green admits, though, that he did have to shoot a bloodbath or two to keep his backers happy. You won’t find it in the film, but rather on the DVD extras.

“There was one critic who was outraged when he saw Frozen,” Green recalls adding, “He could not believe we had shown somebody being torn apart by wolves like that and how disgusting it was. We didn’t show it. He thought he saw it because the movie was effective.”

People actually fainted while watching the flick at the Sundance Film Festival and others actually beat a path out of the theater because it was so disturbing. Of course, Green is pleased.

His influences were Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film, Lifeboat and Steven Spielberg’s action horror adventure, Jaws - both with sympathetic characters that draw the viewer into the story.

Green knew he’d be able to keep audiences riveted despite the majority of Frozen taking place on a ski lift. But, he’s equally certain Hatchet II will reestablish horror the way it’s meant to be produced.

“It’s putting the fun back in the genre again and I think that’s important,” he stresses. “I don’t think we got into the horror genre to watch women be raped and people be tortured and see everything be remade. It’s good to have a villain back on the big screen. It’s good to laugh again and lighten up. That’s what Hatchet II does.”

Still, Hatchet II went into theaters without a rating – and that just infuriates the director, who believes the ratings board is biased against the genre.

“It’s the widest release in mainstream theaters of an unrated horror movie in a quarter of a century,” he points out. “How funny that Hatchet II is the one to break the mold. This isn’t even close to controversial. It’s the easiest R-rated movie you’ve ever seen. When you see this movie ask yourself why this could not get an R-rating and you try to tell me it’s not just politics at the MPAA.”

Since this interview, Hatchet II has been pulled from AMC theaters for under-performing financially.

Seen the movie? Tell us what you think about the rating and the decision to cut the run short.