The movie could have been an action packed sequel to Cliffhanger if Stallone wanted to do it.The movie even starts out like cliffhanger with one of the main characters loosing someone on a mountain climb.After this, the basic premise is that of the best mountain climbers in the world being hired by the united states military to retrieve a weapon that crash landed on said mountain during a winter storm before it accidentally goes off. Of course, these climbers have to convince that guy that lost his love one in the beginning of the film to join the group. To add to the danger, they have little time to get there and someone on the team is willing to kill them in order to get the weapon for themselves.It's a decent plot for a low budget action flick co-starring Nia Peeples who got her action chops on Walker Texas Ranger. The special effects are kinda cheesy and make the movie laughable at times. Though the climbing scenes were okay despite the fact that a lot of it really looked like it was done on s sound stage, sometimes the action sequences were too complex for the FX department.An okay action movie that could have used a little more action and less campy effects.

Not long after I started watching "Sub Zero", I thought, "Hey, this doesn't look too bad for a made-for-video movie." Not long after that, I saw some scenes that looked spectacular - TOO spectacular. I then remembered that Cinetel Films (which made this movie along with Lions Gate) notoriously uses footage from big-budget major studio movies. It didn't take me long to guess that most of the spectacular footage was from "Vertical Limit", and some on-line research I did after watching the movie proved me correct.How was the rest of the movie, the parts with new footage? Well, after watching the movie, I can understand why the director used a pseudonym. The new special effects done for this movie are mediocre at best, embarrassing at their worst (check out the scene when one mountain climber slips and starts sliding down the mountain - very cheaply done.) The script has a number of faults as well. Over half the movie goes by before the protagonists get off their butts and start their mission. There are clichés, like the black guy being the first of the mountain climbing team to die. Then there are laughable bits, like the Russians shooting down a plane in the Mount Everest area (Russia is too far away from there!), and someone saying they climbed Everest in hours when it actually takes DAYS to climb the mountain! If there had been more laughable bits like those, I might have recommended the movie as an unintentional comedy. But as it is, it's one you can safely avoid.

This is worth seeing, if only to provide a floor for rating all other movies. Worst of all time? Probably not. laughingly, shockingly horrible? Definitely. I was embarrassed for the actors in the movie, who must have been randomly recruited from a Greyhound terminal. I was also embarrassed for the movie Vertical Limit, which, though it is also a terrible movie in it's own right, actually made an effort, and has some entertainment value including a couple of Point Break-esquire one-liners. Sub Zero lifted almost all of it's action sequences and mountain scenes from Vertical Limit. When I say lifted, I don't mean they borrowed ideas, but rather cut-and-pasted footage. Another person wrote that one scene looked like an SNL skit, and I agree. Sub Zero is so pathetic, it is almost entertaining. But not quite.

The picture of a climber on the DVD box is what made me rent the movie. I was expecting something no worse than Cliff Hanger or Vertical Limits (both of which were ludicrous). But I knew within the first 2 minutes that this was oh-so-much-worse... The special effects are bad, the acting is bad, the script is pathetic, and the climbing... beyond laughable. Another reviewer already commented on the "crawling along the snow", the missing crampons in the crevasse, and the poor ice axe technique of the "climbers". I'll add to that: 1) the fact that the climbers go from D.C. to K2 base camp at about 20,000ft with no acclimatization (close to instant death...); 2) they carry big, heavy non-expedition tents to Camp 1; 3) there are tire tracks all around Camp 1 (!!!); 4) they never rope up properly, and walk too close together; 5) it's windy outside, but quiet and calm inside the tent (no wind); 6) they carry Coleman gas lanterns to Camp 1 and no one has a headlamp (what real climbers use); 7) their packs and equipment are all new, and yet, all these climbers are "the world's best" with loads of experience; 8) they're not dressed like climbers (furry hood); 9) they keep referring to the fact that it's suicide to climb K2 "in this season" (winter?), yet, it's mostly sunny and apparently not very cold on the mountain (no visible "breath"). And no one - I don't care how good they are - would ever sign up to reach 23,000ft on the north face of K2, within 72 hours of sitting in an office in Washington, D.C. Not even for large sums of money.If you're going to write a movie about climbing, wouldn't you learn SOMETHING about the sport first?For good climbing movies, Everest (IMAX) by David Brashears, and Touching the Void (the Joe Simpson story) --- much, much, much better, even without the fake Russians and glowing Rubik's cubes...