... spooky Christmasy movie review: _Wind Chill_ (2007)...

As many of you know, I still have one more week to celebrate Christmas. Then comes Candlemas and our Christmas trees and decorations come down. The decorations have been helpful while being snowed in. Everything feels more fun and festive. January has always seemed so dreary. The only real gardening I’m doing is indoor gardening, and the hyacinth and crocus have bloomed. The only floral beauty in my home right now is the orchid.

While I’m Christmasing, I’m watching Christmas movies. Not to toss my gothy street cred out the door but I’m a Hallmark Christmas movie junkie to the point that my fella doesn’t even understand. But in my movie-going frenzy, I caught a non-Hallmark film called Wind Chill (2007) on the DVR and watched it the other night.

Wind Chill (2007)

Just before their university campus goes quiet for the winter break, a young woman (Emily Blunt) asks a classmate (Ashton Holmes) for a lift home. The two students set off on their trip and begin to get to know each other. But, when a reckless motorist drives them off the road, they find themselves stranded in the snow on a remote highway. As the night grows colder, the two are confronted by a horde of menacing apparitions -- and struggle to escape with their lives.

Director: Gregory Jacobs

Wind Chill is filled with eerie moments. It isn’t just the story of two college students driving home for Christmas break and then who become stranded in the cold. It’s the story of a girl who gets into a car with a guy she doesn’t know. She was going to take a bus home, but a friend urges her to look at the ride-share board that is posted on campus. Throughout the beginning of the film, the viewer is given subtle clues that reveal that accepting this ride-share was not the best idea. For example, in the very beginning of the drive the guy reminds the girl (oh wait! It’s probably important to point out that the characters do not have names. Throughout the entire film, they never mention one another’s name…weird, right?!? In fact, other than one character Lois, none of the characters are named.) of a lecture in their philosophy class about the difference between reincarnation and eternal recurrence. He’s a Philosophy major and she’s taking the class just because. Throughout their conversations there are a few *this-dude-is-a-creeper* moments, like when he mentioned that she looks good in her glasses to which she questions how he would know since she only wears them in her dorm room.

When a car, which leaves no tire tracks in the snow, runs them off the side road that the guy has decided to take as “a short cut”, the girl ends up locking him out of the car. He heads off to the gas station to seek help. While in the car, the girl sees a few strange people walk by the car in the snow. Only later in the movie did I realize that they didn’t leave any footprints in the snow. When the boy returns and she lets him back in the car, the two are trapped and begin to experience ghostly encounters including one highway patrolman who only shows up when some music plays on the radio. Oh, and the car battery died a while ago.

I won’t give away the ending. To me, the movie was a nice ghost story with a touch of Frozen (2010)—the one where they’re trapped on a ski lift, not the Disney animation in 2013. It wasn’t my favorite film (and it wasn’t super Christmasy at all) but it was decent enough to watch on a snowy evening, and as my fella noted “much better than a Hallmark Christmas movie.”