The Five Worst Movies to Watch While You're Snowed In

If you live anywhere near Kentucky, odds are you're up to your gonads in snow today. While this is just the region's second big snow storm this winter, it's enough to make you long for the warmer climate of more desirable locales like the middle of Death Valley or the surface of the sun. As you face another long weekend trapped in your house (and if you have kids, may God have mercy on your soul), your thoughts probably turn to your couch, your TV and an appointment with a bunch of movies to watch while you wait for the white stuff to melt. There are endless options available for your viewing pleasure, but given the circumstances, you need to be careful about what you choose to watch while you're holed up. As a service to you, dear reader, here are five movies you should do your best to avoid while you're snowed in. 5. Alive Winter is a magical time, full of snowmen, hot chocolate, cuddling by the fire,  and pondering the possibility of having to consume the hindquarters of your closest friends. Based on a true story, Alive depicts the horrors facing a Uruguayan rugby team who crash land on the snowy Andes mountains in the 1970s. After they run through their limited rations, members of the group decide to dip their toes in the warm waters of cannibalism and eat the remains of their fellow passengers in order to survive. It's a harrowing tale, no doubt, but imagine settling in to watch this with your significant other during a snow storm and then discovering you're out of bread and milk. How long could you hold out before you start contemplating which section of your bae might make the tastiest roast? That's probably a door better left unopened, don't you think?   4. The Grey Make no mistake, The Grey is a good movie. It's just not a good movie to watch while you're staring at 8+ inches of snow outside your window. Accurately described as "Liam Neeson vs. Wolves," The Grey follows Neeson and a group of Alaskan oil workers who are forced to battle the elements and a merciless pack of wolves as they try make their way back to civilization after their plane goes down in the middle of a blizzard. The last thing you want to watch while you're trapped in your house is a bunch of hardened tough guys slowly reduced to sniveling cry-babies and wolf food as they wrestle with the hopelessness of their situation. You'll especially want to avoid this one if you have a dog. Because if you're trapped in your house, that means your dog is trapped in your house, too, and you don't want that little descendant of the "canis lupus" getting any ideas from The Grey's furry antagonists.   3. Frozen http://youtu.be/GiUNsDVjCbo No, not THAT Frozen. This Frozen was directed by low-budget horror legend Adam Green, and features three twenty-somethings trapped high above the ground when the ski lift they're riding is shut down early ahead of a massive winter storm. It features a whole bunch of stuff you don't want to think about while you're cut off from society thanks to miserably cold weather: unanswered screams for help, frostbite, skin freezing to cold metal, compound fractures, and murderous wolves. If you like to ski (or, really, do ANYTHING outside in the winter), you'll absolutely despise it after watching Frozen.   2. Dead Snow You know what's worse than being trapped in your house in the middle of a snow storm? Being trapped in your house in the middle of a snow storm while also having to battle the reanimated corpses of Nazi soldiers. That's basically the premise of Dead Snow, a gory Norwegian flick that takes the standard zombie movie tropes and throws in a heaping helping of snow! This is a really fun movie to watch in the spring or summer or fall, when there isn't a flake of snow in sight. But watching it while your entire neighborhood is blanketed by snow is a recipe for disaster. It won't take long for you to convince yourself that a random branch sticking up out of a snowdrift in your backyard is actually the arm of a Nazi zombie clawing its way out to come eat your face. You've got enough problems without having to deal with that sort of mental torture.   1. The Shining Like The Grey, The Shining is a great movie, but one you should avoid at all costs if you find yourself captive in your own home due to a foot of white powder blocking your door. While you may initially find yourself appreciating Stanley Kubrick's meticulous exploration of insanity or Jack Nicholson's legendary portrayal of a good man slowly embracing psychosis, if you pop The Shining into your DVD player while you are unable to leave the confines of your house to make a beer run, you're likely to start identifying with the notion of  "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" more quickly than you'd care to admit. If you have a family or, worse yet, live near a maze constructed out of overgrown hedges, do yourself a favor and run The Shining DVD through your cross-cut shredder as soon as Chris Bailey hints at the possibility of your area getting an inch or more of snow.   @TheSEShepherd