Review of Wind Chill (2007) by Muhammad H — 14 Feb 2008

[i]Wind Chill.

[/i]dir. Gregory Jacobs.

[i]Wind Chill[/i] is essentially an exercise in redundant terror; it starts off promisingly but like its two protagonists plows into a snowbank and gets stuck there for the duration.

None of the characters have names so Emily Blunt plays the girl. She starts the film off rather irritable and cantankerous but by the end she's a whimpering mess, simpering and bawling. The girl is utterly helpless and quite devoid of many survival skills. She's rather privileged and distant. The Guy is played by Ashton Holmes. At first we are supposed to believe that the Guy is psychotic and he's going to do something very terrible to the girl. Holmes captures this aspect of his character by convincingly dropping false clues that he is about to do something dreadful. Martin Donovan is creepy enough as the Highway Patrolman. He certainly exudes a sense of danger in his brief scenes. The acting is quite good throughout and carries the picture through to its utterly confusing ending.

The story is quite simple. The girl wants to go to Delaware for the Christmas break. She is a college student and desperate to go to her parent's house. She finds a flier from someone advertising that they are looking to ferry people to Delaware so she takes the number and calls. She meets the guy and they start driving the five hours toward Delaware. On the way there the guy inexplicably gets off the highway and takes an off road. A car comes barreling at them and the guy is run off the road. For most of the rest of the film the two are stuck without cell phone service on a road with strange people who keep materializing including the highway patrolman and a number of priests. The girl and guy argue for a while, suffer through the extreme cold, and eventually warm up to one another leading to a brief kiss. However, the guy freezes to death when the girl is off trying to connect a regular phone to the box at the top of a phone pole.

The film builds most its tension early on when it isn't clear what the guy's motivations are. He admits to not being from Delaware, learning that the girl needed to get there by looking over her shoulder during class and reading her text message, and planting the flier. He freaks her out and she feels trapped. The film manages to create several moments of discomfort quite early on but once the people show up it loses its momentum and slowly falls apart. The events leading up to the end make no sense whatsoever. One minute she's in the snowplow, the patrolman shows up and the guy hits him over the head with a shovel. Then she's back in the car and the guy is still dead. Then the very next shot he is walking and she follows him through an old abandoned shed or something. I tend to think something is missing because I just can't fathom what this ordering of shots mean. It ruins the film and leaves it out in the cold shivering and chattering.

Overall, this film has a fine enough beginning as tension between the two main characters is palpable. However, this is lost as the strange events are revealed and the landscape is populated with odd beings who do not speak or acknowledge the two protagonists whatsoever. The performances are stellar and fully fleshed out. Emily Blunt proves capable of doing horror as she is quite good at looking scared, confused, irritated, etc. Ultimately, the film falls into a black hole toward the end and it's awfully difficult to figure out just what's going on. It's interesting to watch the two main characters slowly break down because they are essentially just regular people who've had an unfortunate set of circumstances befall them. The message is that this could happen to anyone. However, their situation with the car is only part of the problem and the film explains just who these people are and what they are doing haunting the road. Still, they aren't particularly scary and just seem hopelessly lost, wandering about bewildered and hurt.