Scan and Pan
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Wind Chill
A young woman (Emily Blunt) trying to get home from college at Christmas accepts a ride share with another student, a young man (Ashton Holmes) who may just be stalking her. Instead of staying on the main highway during a snow storm, he decides to take a short cut down an old country road. After swerving to avoid an oncoming car, they crash into a snowbank and decide to wait until the morning to hike out for help. While trying to keep warm in sub-freezing temperatures, they begin to see and experience things that leave them in doubt of surviving the night.
Director Gregory Jacobs (Criminal), a longtime assistant to Soderbergh, serves up an old fashioned ghost story where a disquieting sense of isolation effectively puts the audience on edge for the scares to come. The screenplay by Joe Gangemi and Steven Katz (Shadow of the Vampire) is a bit talky at times, but it's all part of trying to create characters with some psychological depth. It appears at first that the biggest danger to the two are their own emotional issues, which threaten their safety long before the ghosts do. The horror elements aren't nearly as strong as they could have been, but they're good enough to prevent the film from being a disappointment. The story takes place mostly in the car or just outside of it, so cinematographer Dan Laustsen (Brotherhood of the Wolf, Silent Hill) deserves credit for creating a creepy atmosphere in such limited settings.
Blunt follows up her scene-stealing performance in The Devil Wears Prada with a vivid performance as an angst-ridden young woman trapped with a companion who she thinks may be a bigger danger to her than the inclement weather or the weird goings-on. The English-born actress also assumes a convincing American accent. Holmes (the teenage son in A History of Violence) is very believable as the creepy guy with a crush on Blunt's character. Martin Donovan is solid enough as a patrolman who they encounter on the road.
Wind Chill isn't a great horror film, but it's an effective one at times that tries to offer something more than the usual CGI effects, gore, and jump scenes.
[3.5 out of 5 stars]
Executive producers George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich, Ocean's Eleven) present a ghost story that's driven more by character development and atmosphere than by cheap thrills.
A young woman (Emily Blunt) trying to get home from college at Christmas accepts a ride share with another student, a young man (Ashton Holmes) who may just be stalking her. Instead of staying on the main highway during a snow storm, he decides to take a short cut down an old country road. After swerving to avoid an oncoming car, they crash into a snowbank and decide to wait until the morning to hike out for help. While trying to keep warm in sub-freezing temperatures, they begin to see and experience things that leave them in doubt of surviving the night.
Director Gregory Jacobs (Criminal), a longtime assistant to Soderbergh, serves up an old fashioned ghost story where a disquieting sense of isolation effectively puts the audience on edge for the scares to come. The screenplay by Joe Gangemi and Steven Katz (Shadow of the Vampire) is a bit talky at times, but it's all part of trying to create characters with some psychological depth. It appears at first that the biggest danger to the two are their own emotional issues, which threaten their safety long before the ghosts do. The horror elements aren't nearly as strong as they could have been, but they're good enough to prevent the film from being a disappointment. The story takes place mostly in the car or just outside of it, so cinematographer Dan Laustsen (Brotherhood of the Wolf, Silent Hill) deserves credit for creating a creepy atmosphere in such limited settings.
Blunt follows up her scene-stealing performance in The Devil Wears Prada with a vivid performance as an angst-ridden young woman trapped with a companion who she thinks may be a bigger danger to her than the inclement weather or the weird goings-on. The English-born actress also assumes a convincing American accent. Holmes (the teenage son in A History of Violence) is very believable as the creepy guy with a crush on Blunt's character. Martin Donovan is solid enough as a patrolman who they encounter on the road.
Wind Chill isn't a great horror film, but it's an effective one at times that tries to offer something more than the usual CGI effects, gore, and jump scenes.
[3.5 out of 5 stars]
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