Woo hoo!  IT’S A SKI WEEKEND!

Of course, this ski weekend is taking place in an R.L. Stine novel so maybe don’t get too excited just yet.  Bad things are probably going to happen.  A group of friends from Shadyside High decide to spend the weekend skiing because, apparently, every form of entertainment and leisure was located only an hour or two from Shadyside.  If you live in Shadyside, you can go skiing or you can go to the beach or you can to summer camp or maybe even explore the bayous.  You just have to drive for an hour or two.

(Okay, I can’t remember if Shadyside has a bayou nearby but I imagine it does.)

Ariel is big into science.  Her friend Doug is a troubled tough guy with a heart of Gold.  Shannon is Doug’s girlfriend, who is pretty and what else do you need to be?  Originally, Ariel’s boyfriend Randy was a part of the group but Randy, apparently being a Hang Time fan, decided that he would rather leave and go play basketball than spend his time risking his life on the slopes.  I don’t blame Randy.  Do you have any idea how many people die in skiing accident every year?

Anyway, after Randy and Ariel have a big fight and Randy drives off in his car, an older guy named Red pops up out of nowhere and comforts her.  Everyone is so touched by the concern of this weird older guy that they’ve never seen before that they agree to give Red a ride to his home.  Unfortunately, they get stranded in a blizzard and are forced to take shelter at a farm house that is owned by a redneck named Lou and his wife, Eva.  Lou is kind of a perv but everyone decides that it would be better to stay with him than to sit out in the car and freeze to death.

Well, of course, it turns out that there’s more going on here than just a car getting stuck in a blizzard.  Lou turns out to be dangerous but it also turns out that Lou is not the only person in the farmhouse who has secrets.  It looks like Randy made the right decision leaving to play basketball.

First published in 1991, Ski Weekend has some chilling moments that really capture the idea of being stranded somewhere and not sure of when you’re ever going to get to leave.  There’s a bad person who wears a ski mask and seriously, ski masks are pure nightmare fuel!  That said, this is another R.L. Stine film that is dependent upon a group of people doing something monumentally stupid.  Seriously, it’s nice that Red asked Ariel if she was okay but there was nothing about his actions that really required the Shadyside kids to go out of their way to give Red a ride home.  Today, they would just get him an Uber.  Remember that the next time that people say all of this new technology has ruined the world!