What Frozen Would Look Like as a Psychedelic Thriller

Disney’s Frozen saga has never quite delivered the kind of hypnotic, ice‑bound psychological thriller I crave: a taut drama between two formidable — perhaps deluded — women, refracted through frosted imagery. Maybe the currently scheduled Frozen 3 and 4 will answer that call, but the signs are not promising. Fortunately, The Ice Tower exists.

Lucile Hadžihalilović — whose films read like paintings in motion — directs this new work, which centers on Jeanne (newcomer Clara Pacini), a 16‑year‑old orphan who takes refuge on a film lot. There she encounters Cristina (Inception’s Marion Cotillard), who is shooting an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. The pair become strangely intertwined and mesmerized by one another; the trailer suggests an atmosphere of Hitchcockian menace rather than broad family spectacle.

Hadžihalilović, known for films such as Evolution and Earwig, favors elliptical storytelling over plot-driven mechanics. Early responses from the 2025 Berlin Film Festival indicate The Ice Tower follows that pattern: dreamlike logic, sumptuous cinematography, and an unsettling theatricality created by the film‑within‑the‑film setting. Instead of Disney’s comic relief, the project features Gaspar Noé — the provocative French director and Hadžihalilović’s real‑life partner — playing a film director, which proves an intriguingly subversive substitution. (See more on Noé’s provocative work here.)

The Ice Tower opens in limited release on October 3, 2025 — a full two years before the currently slated Frozen 3 — so if you reserve space for only one Snow Queen story per year, this one is an excellent contender.

Source: Polygon