Demons in the Freezer

Oh the surface Never Been Thawed covers the same ground as the documentary Trekkies. Groups of people who collect, obsess and gluttonously acquire items that fulfill desires for an alternate reality.  The irony is that the characters lives are richer through their pursuit of quirky collecting and road-word games, while frozen in recurring destructive behaviors and patterns. Each character is trying to exercise control in their lives.  Matt exemplifies this behavior when he says he captures and stores his urine, "...until I am ready to deal with it on my own terms. Take control back in my life." Scott is also trying to exert control, being out of the closet, while trying to shove himself back in, to become an ex-gay.

The opening of the film includes an explanation about collecting from a comics store owner, "...people become very glutinous for things, it's coveting, you covet something." As the story unfolds, each of the characters covets in various ways, Al covets Shelley, Shawn covets rock-n-roll success, Shelley covets Shawn and Shawn's deaf brother. And of course, they all covet frozen entrees.

The control the characters are trying to exert is dominated by the taking of treasures from the explicit or implied tragic circumstances of other people's lives. Scott, the fire fighter, takes collectables from the aftermath of fires. Milo the owner of No Choice Cafe is taking in wealth from the political turmoil surrounding abortion rights as he says, "...I was taking advantage-or-I was actually, you know, catering to, the protestors." Shawn and Al trying to monetize their band using Christian themes while dating christian groupies.

The sub-text of the film is less like Trekkies and more like The Glass Menagerie. Each character is creating their own illusion about the world around them and those illusions are only momentarily broken. When the film visits the characters months later, they are each still expressing their own illusions in modified form; the band on the road, Shawn and Milo talking about banging women and getting fucked up while praising Jesus and Al crushing out on an unavailable girl in the same way he did over Shelley.

The first hint that it isn't just about frozen entrees is when Shawn mentions he got his first freezer when he was 12. Later, Al says he has been consoling Shawn's ex-girlfriends since the age of 12-13. Linking us to the formation of their life long anxieties and obsessions. Shawn's apartment has a literal couch on top of a freezer.  He is living with his demons and anyone who enters the house will be living with them too.

The movie is really about our demons in our heads, usually frozen and looping over and over.