I think the “point” is that it’s easier to make a mockumentary than a traditional narrative film. Or at least it’s easier to make it professional-looking. And that is certainly one of AMERICAN ZOMBIE’S strong suits – it looks and sounds like a real documentary. The acting is solid, the cinematography is very documentary-like, and the zombie-infected world it creates is relatively believable. As a genuine documentary it may have been informative and enlightening. As a mockumentary it’s completely and utterly boring.

The world that serves as the setting of AMERICAN ZOMBIE is sort of a cousin to DISTRICT 9 – zombies live among us and they are widely discriminated against. The zombies haven’t been rounded up to live in detention camps in Grace Lee’s film, though I can’t imagine why not, as zombies have been known to be pretty dangerous. The prejudices portrayed here are a little more understandable than in D9, especially considering zombies are human-eating undead as opposed to seemingly harmless aliens. Regardless, it is clear the filmmakers’ intent is for their film to serve as a metaphor for the plight of immigrants and/or minorities. An admirable goal sure, but the execution lacks both subtlety and insight.

The film profiles a pro-zombie special interest group, a zombie-led grassroots movement, and a couple non-politicized everyday zombies. It is explained there are three types of zombies (or revenants as they are sometime called): feral, partially functioning, and fully functioning. Apparently they are not afforded protection under human laws and many are exploited and serve as slave laborers. To make matters worse, their bodies are slowly decomposing and nobody knows how long they have to continue non-living. It’s all very serious. It’s all very dry and boring.

One of the featured zombies, played by Austin Basis, is quite likeable and his scenes almost serve to balance out the exercise in tedium that is every other scene. Almost, but not quite. AMERICAN ZOMBIE isn’t as much a horror movie as it is a public service announcement. It’s a sermon without a hook.  It’s a fake documentary.

Wrong-decade misfortune that may be, however, it’s great to be able to say that Trick ‘r Treat will still be watched on Halloween for decades to come. Those who love it, like I, will still be watching it with great devotion. Those who merely liked it will not be able to help themselves from putting it on as background to their Halloween parties. And those who hated it, well, those who hated it don’t exist. They can’t exist. To hate Trick ‘r Treat would be to hate the entire spirit of Halloween, a spirit Dougherty apparently has complete domain over.

Read the rest of my TRICK ‘R TREAT review at HorrorSquad.

As for the story, it takes you through RE 0, 1 (the remake), 3 as well as a brand new scenario. Each game includes side-stories for characters specific characters (mainly Albert Wesker and what he was doing behind the scenes.) You’ll face familiar bosses and be in familiar locales; so if you have an itch to revisit some of the most well-known areas and enemies of Resident Evil, then you should be pleasantly surprised. If you have been paying attention to the RE canon (you haven’t), you will notice some discrepancies but it doesn’t take anything away from the overall experience.  Besides, it wouldn’t be Capcom if continuity wasn’t hurt in some fashion.

Gameplay is basic, simple and fun.  Shoot enemies, throw grenades, or stab the ones attached to your face.  Shooting with either of the guns is as expected: point, pull trigger, repeat. Enemies have very small hit boxes for one-hit headshots, but the difficulty is almost exactly where it should be. When needed, grenades can be thrown to clear a path through the horde of undead. If you see a green herb, click it to recover lost health. First Aid sprays revive you to full health if you die. Some enemies (such as leeches from RESIDENT EVIL 0 ) will jump on you and when you hold the Z button while shaking it, you will slice off the enemy. This doesn’t make much sense, as the enemies are, stuck on your face; what further adds to the confusion is that you are perfectly able to shoot the enemies…off of your face. It’s obvious this feature was used so you would be able to use the infamous knife but it doesn’t mean it makes any sense.

Confusion aside, the game offers several reasons to give itself another runthrough or two. To unlock some of the side-stories mentioned earlier, you’ll need to get a very good rating at the end of the level, so some missions may require several play-throughs before you get the required rating needed to unlock them. Also adding to the replay factor are the rewards given at the end of each mission. Depending on the rating you will get stars. Those stars are used to upgrade your weapons. The higher the rating, the more stars you get; nothing new there. If the difficulty gets to be too much in the later levels then you can easily replay any of the previous levels in order to upgrade your favorite weapons.

UMBRELLA CHRONICLES starts out at RE:0 and chronologically works its way  through the series with the new scenario being the final area. While the game scales moderately through the earlier titles, once you hit Resident Evil 3 the game gets pretty hard pretty fast.   Though if you have a friend helping you out, the game is too easy regardless of what level you are on. The downside to this is that the amount of enemies stays roughly the same, so your kills will be divided, further hurting your respective grades at the end of a mission; which leads to less stars, which leads to fewer weapon upgrades. Considering the ease with co-op, it’s a fair tradeoff. Although, while on co-op, you share an overall health bar; so your friend has to be somewhat competent or you’re both screwed.

I find the biggest hindrance off the game is the total lack of fine tuning the controller itself.  No adjusting, centering, setting your specific controller.  This makes it impossible to aim the gun at the screen the way you would at an arcade. It may seem silly, but you can’t deny that’s why you played TIME CRISIS. You got to fire a ‘real’ gun and kill bad guys. With this, you have to adjust your own sense of direction and position with how your Wii sensor bar is setup. The lack of calibration is a huge disappointment considering games like GHOST SQUAD, a port of a 2004 game(!), have said pointer calibration as a feature.

While the lack of calibration takes away some of the immersion, using a controller or accessory as you would use a normal Wii controller does not make the game feel clunky or awkward.  I bought the Nyko Perfect Shot accessory specifically for RE:UC. A friend preferred the original Wii controller, where I preferred the Perfect Shot, so it’s what works for the individual rather than an exact method. Because of certain reasons, I purchased the ‘official’ Resident Evil Blaster shortly after I completed UMBRELLA CHRONICLES and I fell in love with it. The holder for the Nunchuck, and how light weight it is make it hard to hate.  If you don’t want to buy an extra accessory for the game, don’t worry; there are several controller setups for that ease the lack of calibration.

The presentation of it all is well put together. The graphics leave something to be desired as it seems to be running on the same engine as RE:4.  By no means ugly, just is not up to par. Unlike most rail shooters, the entire campaign is fairly long covering several hours of gameplay and there’s even more if you want to try to upgrade everything and get all of the hidden weapons.

While it is far from perfect, UMBRELLA CHRONICLES easily manages to be the best shooter for the Wii so far and it’s a great side-story to the overall RE world. It makes me very hopeful for the sequel.  If you have a Wii and want to blow the hell out of some zombies, then you will be hard pressed to find a better way to spend twenty bucks.

The film I got was DEADBOX.  It is the story of a group of semi-pro paintball players traveling across the country to compete in the big tournament.  The leader of the group decides to make a pitstop when he sees an abandoned building off the highway.  What better place to practice their slightly sloppy short game than a rusted-out shell of prison?  Plus, there is the added bonus of breaking in their newest team member, Cutesy Von No-Business-Here.  Low and behold, things go awry when the only remaining tenant of the prison pops up and decides to kill them.  A shell-shocked veteran, he has a phobia about hidden transmitters that he’s convinced are lurking beneath the skin of anyone who comes near him.

The hook of this film, what the DVD’s box really tries to sell you on, is that it is “one continuous 105 minute take.”  That’s right, DEADBOX is being sold as the modern-day horror equivalent of Hitchcock’s ROPE.  Actually, this is boasting the “longest take in film history.”  I was impressed by the testicular fortitude of this DTV horror film as it apparently poised itself to take on any one-long-shot movie ever made!  I want you to remember this marketing device; keep it in your back pocket as I review this film.

DEADBOX is easily one of the worst films I have ever seen.  I would by no means assign absolute worst of all time status as that would just be hyperbole, but this thing stinks to high heaven.  The “characters” are incredibly obnoxious.  The cutie-pie girl looks like she wouldn’t know how to spell paintball if you gave her the first five letters much less convince me that she was a major component of their team.  The leader of the team spends the entire film doing a bad Matthew McConaughey impression and the heel of the group is such an unabashed dickbag that it flies in the face of reason that anyone would be friends with such an asswipe.  DEADBOX employs a K-Mart version of mubblecore ad-lib that wouldn’t fly in a high school improv class.  It actually made me wonder if the first half hour of the film had a script at all because the actors were repeating themselves over and over and stepping on each other’s lines.  But maybe it was because doing a second take would have ruined the integrity of their continuous shot claim.

The ”horror” moments in the film are obviously shooting for shock value, but their budget precludes them from accomplishing this feat.  Every victim is strung up and has pieces removed in a very withholding, we-can’t-afford-to-show-it kind of way.  They use ample folley and fake blood but also use goofy slight of hand nonsense to substitute for anything resembling graphic violence.  It’s not as if they were trying to be subtle, there is a scene where the killer carries around something that kind of looks like a human organ and the camera loves the hell out of it, but if your movie is going to be hindered by budget than why would you attempt to undertake a torture film that inherently requires expensive (or at least more creative) splatter effects?

The killer is ridiculous and is about as far from threatening as it gets.   His mumbling was practically inaudible the entire time and when he did speak, he gave a flat, uninspired delivery of one line over and over to the point where I wanted to chuck something at my TV.  “There’s a transmitter inside, gotta find it” “There’s a transmitter inside, gotta find it”  I’m sorry, are you trying to convince us you are crazy or just make sure we understand the plot?

I really cannot fathom the market they were hoping to capture with this film.  The horror is preposterous, none of the acting is anything near competent, and it is poorly shot.  Perhaps you are wondering if at least paintball enthusiasts will appreciate the grandiose treatment of their beloved sport.  Not even close.  The two scenes of paintball shenanigans are so badly shot that you want the game to end immediately (say by way of someone falling out a window or having a massive coronary).  It is captured in tight close ups that show us the world of paintball through the eyes of a tee-shirt sleeve.  Not once does it pull back to show the scope of the game or even attempt to frame an interesting or dramatic shot.  Phenomenally piss poor throughout.

Okay, so at least DEADBOX has the 105 minute, continuous shot gimmick right? I popped this damn thing in and checked the run time…..83 minutes!!  I am interested to know how their record-breaking 105 minute shot was magically achieved in 83 minutes!  That’s not even close!  Well at least they have an 83 minute continuous shot right?  I sat and counted each and every time the film dissolved from one shot to a completely different one at a different location: 11 fucking shots!!  Newsflash hack filmmakers:  Just because you use your fancy dissolve-to-wipe from one shot to another instead of jump-cutting or smash-cutting doesn’t mean you have a continuous shot!

This movie is dreck on top of lies.  It isn’t fun, it isn’t scary, it isn’t interesting.   Do not waste your time scouring the truck stops in the southwest for this title (its inevitable sole retailer).  Your efforts will not be rewarded.

Brian’s Rating: F

Editor’s Note: I’ve asked BrianK to explore the arid wasteland of Netflix’ Watch Instantly section once a week in search of lost treasures, the only important rule being his find cannot be a film anyone has ever told him anything about.  These are his results.

Directed by Rigoberto Castañeda, 2007
Written by Ed Dougherty

The dead woman is quickly revealed to be the suicide-victim wife of Dr. Karl (Aiden Gillen), who is shown sometime later to be trying to balance caring for his young daughter with his job and his grief. Shortly thereafter, Claudia (Amber Tamblyn) – who maybe accidentally killed her grandmom by saying hello to a homeless man – and Tommy (Armie Hammer) – the sensitive semi-badass – are introduced as the other 2/3rds of our trio who will become stuck in an elevator.

So there we have our setup – this diverse group of folk (not too diverse, they are all Caucasian after all) will be within elbow range of each other for at least a few hours, while stuck high in a seemingly impossibly tall residential building elevator shaft. To make things worse, the building is under much needed renovations, and is almost vacant for Fourth of July Weekend.

Emotions quickly get the best of our triumvirate, partially due to their obvious predicament, and partially because they all have important shit to do. The early bickering is intercut with flashbacks revealing their backgrounds and why they are in such a damn hurry. The acting is surprisingly strong all the way around, especially Aiden Gillen, as the off-kilter doctor, and Armie Hammer (who I think could should have a future in action movies), as the “tough” guy.

Be warned though, it gets a tad “darker” than you might expect. This is not LIFE BOAT or PHONE BOOTH, in terms of subject matter usually presented in the people-stuck-in-small-places genre. The director, Rigoberto Castañeda, is a Mexican fellow (I apologize if that sounds vaguely racist), who, by looking at some of the scenes in BLACKOUT, and the title of his short film NECROFILIA, has some of the same predilections as early Nacho Cerdà. You get one guess as to what those are.

Those proclivities aside, Castañeda, along with cinematographer Alejandro Martínez (STAY ALIVE†), keep everything looking sharp. They make ample use of the technique pioneered by Fincher in PANIC ROOM – where the camera appears to travel through floors and walls (probably without the expense of the “previsualization” used by Fincher). Albeit a little showy, in BLACKOUT the technique was not entirely without purpose in the scope of telling the story. That’s better than most special effects can say.

Castañeda does a good job at continually amping up the tension, whether by mechanical failure or unexpected character development. Speaking of the characters, they actually earn their behavior, if that makes sense. Even abrupt shifts in personalities are supported by little things called “reason” and “purpose,” which can be all too absent in the “thriller” genre.

The script, by Ed Doughtery (his sole credit to date), does an admirable job of fleshing out each of the character’s stories. Even the backstories are enjoyable vignettes. Hammer’s character’s story could have made an interesting “romantic drama,” had he not stepped on that elevator. Characters in movies of this subspecies usually do not get that level of respect from their writers and directors.

Don’t let me go overboard here. BLACKOUT isn’t a perfect movie, by any means. It certainly isn’t the most original story in the world, there are a couple scenes that feel completely out of place, and I thought the director missed out on making it more claustrophobic. But it puts itself in the upper echelon of DTV thrillers by being genuinely tense, fun, and ultimately quite entertaining. These qualities are not expected from a film randomly picked on Netflix’s “Watch Instantly”, but movies that come up behind you with a whisper can catch you by surprise.

Note: Speaking of people being stuck on elevators, if you haven’t read the story of Nick White, you really should.  And video.

*No actual blackout.
†It should be noted that by simply mentioning this title I run the risk of Peter refusing to publish this review.

“Welcome to Rapture”

Never before have I seen a tagline to anything emanate more truth than BIOSHOCK’s. Rapture, an underwater city of the genetically damned with a chilling sensation that never relents with every single crafted item enforces the sensation and I mean everything. BIOSHOCK may have the most engrossing and immersive world that I have ever been privy to.

The story kicks off with Jack surviving a plane crash in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. With all coincidence, Jack’s plane crashes near the entrance to Rapture. Seeking aid, Jack transcends the entrance and immediately receives a distress call from a man named Atlas, a survivor of the ravaged utopia. He pleads to Jack for aid as his wife and daughter are being held at the mercy of the insane ruler of the city, Andrew Ryan.

As you traverse more of Rapture Atlas explains how Rapture fell into hell and why Andrew Ryan built Rapture as a way to carry on his scientific experiments away from the judgmental eyes of the public and the laws of governmental rule. Ryan’s goals were all in the name of science as one cannot have a conscience if they wish to achieve the total understanding of the human limit. As Ryan needed live experiments, he offered safe haven for all who wished to live in his truly free city.

It may seem convoluted but the story progresses fairly quickly in the beginning in an attempt to thrust the player into the world and Jack’s story and it works almost flawlessly. I’ve mentioned before my love of first person shooters that take place entirely through the character’s eyes and BIOSHOCK is no exception. Most of the game has a distinct feeling of Half-Life in terms of playability and immersion. Your first weapon in the game is even a monkey wrench which seems like a slight homage to Gordon Freeman’s crowbar.

Ryan’s experiments consisted of modifying and changing the physical appearances of citizens however they wished.  Along with plastic surgery, DNA modification substances called plasmids were invented. These plasmids have the ability to give the consumer several different types of abilities from telekinesis to pyrokinesis.

Along with the offensive ability of the plasmids, passive ability tonics are featured throughout BIOSHOCK. These tonics offer a large amount of beneficial passive abilities such as the length of time to solve a hacking puzzle or give your melee swings more power. With three categories for tonics each with forty different kinds as wells as forty different plasmids the combat system is incredibly in depth and offers a near endless amount of combinations.

Plasmids are not your only form of defense. There are a fair amount of other upgradeable weapons at your disposal although nothing is very special or unique. You can obtain a pistol, shotgun, machine gun and a few others but nothing you haven’t seen before. The other weapons feel as more of an afterthought as the plasmids are at the epicenter of combat.

BIOSHOCK effectively uses several minigames to provide more backstory and depth but add to the overall experience. The first is that the player is given a camera and when you take pictures of enemies you successfully gather more information on that specific one, which allows you to do more damage to them. It’s not mandatory at all and the game can easily be completed without taking a single extra picture; but it does add a nice little feature that can be used to lengthen your visit to Rapture.

The second is the hacking minigame. You are given a square grid with Point A at the left and Point B on the right. A substance will start to flow and it’s your job to re-arrange a pipe system to get the substance to flow from Point A to Point B. It’s not very complicated and the puzzles seem to perfectly increase with difficulty as the game progresses. These hacking puzzles are scattered throughout the entirety of Rapture so it’s best to familiarize yourself with the concept as early as you can.

During your time in Rapture you will run across the Little Sisters. These freakish looking little girls wander the city looking for any traces of ADAM left. ADAM is a highly addictive substance that’s creation and usage lead to the city’s destruction. The Little Sisters are escorted by a Big Daddy, a huge low-intelligence creature with just one thought: protect the Little Sisters. As well as being on one of the best box covers for a game, they will dish out massive amounts of damage to ensure that they are protected. If you manage to defeat them you will be given a choice to harvest all of the ADAM from the Little Sister (leading to the “bad” ending) or take away just enough so they regain their humanity (leading to the ‘good’ ending.)

I must admit, the design and presence of the Big Daddy rivals anything I have seen out of a game in a very long time. From the first time I saw one until the last they had such a commanding presence over me that gave me the chills and told me to beware. With the sequel approaching fast I am captivated about what new creature(s) that Rapture may show me on my second visit.

One reoccurring object that makes the destruction of the Big Daddies are the vita chambers. They are instant resurrection chambers that will throw you right back into the fray and they are utilized in every level of BIOSHOCK (sans the final encounter.) It makes BIOSHOCK seem easier than it should as dying becomes a minor inconvenience. The silver lining to this is that they can be deactivated at will via the options menu.

Ever since Fallout first introduced the 1920’s theme to the gaming genre, I have fallen in love with it. I still love watching old gangster movies and I honest to God love some of the old songs used for Fallout introductions (and most of the entire soundtrack to Fallout 3.)

BIOSHOCK takes this theme and successfully runs with it. With respect to the music, it uses over forty songs from the era and can be accessed when you come across a phonograph. Visually, nothing seems generic. Minute items such as vent grate, handrails and floor tiles seem to have been meticulously designed so it will fit and stand out and even enhance the atmosphere. I truly believe the environment as a whole could not have been approved upon.

BIOSHOCK’s visuals (in terms of quality) are not mind blowing and they physics engine will not drop any jaws but that doesn’t stop it from being very appealing to the eye. Utilizing a heavily modified version of the Unreal 2.5 engine, it may not stand out in any one facet but the parts are greater than the sum. It may not look the best but how every little detail is correctly assembled, you won’t be able to tell the difference.

The 2007 Game of the Year effectively mixes horror, science fiction and action together in a game that has me instantly salivating at the concept of a sequel. The overall pacing is almost perfect with the only real downside I can think of are the lack of enemy varieties. Aside from the Big Daddies, there are only about four regular types of enemies you face. This makes the end game combat start to feel a bit repetitive near the finale. The worst part about BIOSHOCK is that the experience ends.

TIMBER FALLS is an overall decent City Folk Shouldn’t Go Hiking flick with the potential to have been better were it not bookended by arguably the most over exposed horror set-up there is.  An attractive couple chipper enough to take a weekend long hike in the hills of West Virginia are ultimately kidnapped by a fugly hillbilly, only to have the wife escape and run into a park ranger, who is of course kin to the fuglerton.  Thus the cycle of torture and imprisonment begins again.

The problem inherent to a plot like this is not that it has been done to death, rather that the filmmakers think their audience must be complete fucking morons.  I’m not sure who Daniel Kay thought he was writing this movie for or who Tony Giglio thought he was making this movie for, but the obvious answer should have been you and I and not Them.  We’ve seen every backwoods battle flick under the sun, which is why we will see another Straight-to-DVD one.  They, whoever they are, have not and are not about to start with the no names attached TIMBER FALLS.  That being the case, for the love of all that is Chainsaw, do not wait 20 minutes into the movie to sock us with your limp plot twist that the wood folk our city heroes bumped into are also all in on the plot.  We saw that coming 30 minutes ago.

That major annoyance aside, should one have the patience to sit through 20 odd minutes of regurgitated foundation (albeit with improved landscaping), the middle portion of TIMBER FALLS reveals a few interesting wares others of its ilk lack.  The family has a twinge more unhinged agenda than the standard, “We’re inbreds so we need your genetically unpolluted womb(s)” plot.  Oh, they still want to make a baby, but they want Mike and Sheryl to do the copulating after bestowing upon them God’s marital blessings in a bizarre underground wedding ceremony.  Secondly, the star of the show is not the damsel Sheryl (Brianna Brown) rather the man of the hour Mike (Josh Randall).  All too often it is the final girl show as far as these outings are concerned.  It is a relief to see a script that offers up a man who is not dispatched in the initial chase, is realistically enraged after discovering his girlfriend has gone missing, and that actually brought a gun on their weekend excursion.  Naturally, Sheryl makes him throw away the bullets within the first 20 minutes, but at least Mike isn’t a pussy, right?

The head of the family is played by Nick Searcy, who pulls off the the patriarch of the religious nutballs well enough, but it is Beth Broderick who deserves the talking points along side Josh Randall.  Yes, she who played Zelda on “SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH” is a psychotic hill woman with a rocky womb hell bent on raising a healthy baby born in wedlock.  Kudos, casting department, wouldn’t have called that one myself.  Despite a filmography that lists a few low budget horror flicks and a pretty face, Brianna Brown never nails down all that encompasses being a scream queen, but that’s okay because Josh Randall (over?) compensates with his fuck ‘em all attitude and ridiculously jacked upper torso.

The film is about 15 minutes too long, which is odd considering the editor on task has no experience with transitions.  One shot Mike and Sheryl are walking up a crowded trail, the next they’re laying in a bed of moss and Sheryl’s bra is almost off.  I’m curious to know if the in between just never went in front of the camera or if it was cut for adding to the already bloated length.

Things are kept relatively lively, though, thanks to two moonshine brewing mountain men and a few park rangers not involved in the baby swindling plot.  All of the threads converge in an unexpected blood bath, which is a nice distraction considering the rest of the movie is nothing revolutionary.

It has been so long since I’ve reviewed anything, I, for a second, forgot how to format these things.  One may have grown to expect the return would bring in hand an extraordinary, hidden horror elixir.  One is now disappointed.  Congratulations!  We have something in common!

WIND CHILL is on the straight and narrow towards Alright-Alright’ington.  Not bad, not good.  A well enough place to hang your hat is all I’m saying.

However, WIND CHILL does intrigue me in a department most strictly satisfactory films do not.  George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh have their names on the film via their Section Eight production house AND Clint Mansell did the score.  I’d like to know whether their outfit was looking to make a quick and clean grab for some of thems horrors moneyies, or the impressive collective of Cloonney, Soderbergh et all wound up with Joe Gangemi and Steven Katz’s script and were legitimately blown away.

I have this funny – and to me it is funny – feeling that it is a bit of both, that Section Eight wanted to stir some cash and were wow’ed by the script.  That would go to show 1) how outside of the genre they are, that there exists a handful of films with this same stuck-on-a-road-to-nowhere hook in the last three years alone and 2) that not one of the millionaires looking to get in the game ever walked the horror isles of their local video store or Best Buy.  Not that I blame them, just amusing to me that Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney, men who have reached the recent heights of their careers by taking risks, dipped their hand into such a safe bet.

To its credit, WIND CHILL sports a few uncommon elements for a movie about people stuck on a road after swerving into a snow drift in order to avoid a phantom car.  First off, Emily Blunt’s character is a bit of a bitch.  A script can score easy points with me by centering on a protag you wouldn’t mind drowning right off the bat.  In this, Emily Blunt (no character names, by the way) starts as a real pain in the ass Daddy’s girl and then guides her down believable development  Second, the guy who brings her along, Ashton Holmes, isn’t all that enjoyable himself.  So you’ve got a movie that draws the viewer along despite the fact that it intentionally boasts two uninteresting persons at its core.

I’m a fan of the road-to-nowhere film, so I may be giving more of a pass to WIND CHILL than most would.  It doesn’t matter to me that I knew the script’s grist just from reading the vague plot description.  I’m a forgiving guy.  This is a horror movie that could easily be suggested to those who do not watch horror movies.  Especially if said Those are female as Emily Blunt anchors the entire picture from drifting too far from unrelatability.  It has its share of soft, subtle freak out moments in addition to a cozy sense of dread.

For those who do watch a lot of horror movies, it would be easy to say skip WIND CHILL.  There are a lot of movies out there and certainly plenty more deserving of your 100 minutes.  Thus is the unfortunate residence of Gregory Jacobs’ film, a film late to an already crowded neighborhood.  Sure, it has character draw to it, plays under unique circumstances and my time spent with it passed painlessly, but I also had seen WIND CHILL three times before I ever even pressed play.

Shrug.