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directed by Sonny Laguna
Sweden 2011

"Stressed out" (read whiny) singer Winona (Hanna Oldenburg) wants to get away from the city for a couple weeks and has her manager rent her a secluded home near her snowy home town. The place is run-down and the silence gets to her after a few minutes, so she heads into town to get a drink. Since it's a small town, she inevitably runs into her ex-boyfriend Richard (Patrick Saxe). She invites him and his friends, horndog Carl (Andreas Rylander, DEAD ON ARRIVAL) and his exasperated girlfriend Liz (Elin Hugoson) back to her place for beers. It gets late and the snow piles up so Winona invites them to crash in the spare room. Richard takes the sofa but gravitates up to Winona's bedroom where they renew their relationship. Meanwhile, outside in the cold, an axe-wielding assailant disables the engine of Winona's car (permanently). The killer gorily takes out Winona's boyfriend and his friends. When Winona wakes up, she finds herself alone with a vicious, seemingly unstoppable killer in the middle of nowhere. This Swedish production, acted in English and photographed using the Canon 7D digital SLR (as was the Italian zombie flick EATERS: RISE OF THE DEAD and the Uruguayan horror movie THE SILENT HOUSE), is an assured directorial debut for Sonny Laguna but rather ordinary in other respects. The build-up is well-paced, the photography atmospheric (although a spotlight filter is used to darken the edges of the frame, which looks good on static shots but draws attention to itself when the camera moves and it actually looks like a spotlight is mounted to the camera and following the actor around), and the score effectively utilized. The scripting of the English dialogue is naturalistic, but the actors' delivery is sometimes awkward (which may take the viewer out of the conversations), although they all seem to be fluent in the language. The only real bit of novelty has the oblivious heroine's boyfriend be the one unnerved by strange sounds and sights (the heroine, on the other hand, sees a trail of blood on the hardwood floor and decides to mop it up before looking for her boyfriend and his friends). The killer's getup is derivative; however, he does scream at his victims in place of the usual music stings. The final half of the film is more suspenseful with little dialogue and some surprising bits of violence visited upon the heroine (and a pleasingly restrained use of CGI gore). Winona puts up a good fight, but it seems odd that the most oblivious of the cast's few characters (other than her manager who shows up late to add to the body count) should be the one who we are supposed to identify with. In the end, however, the killer is nothing new, nor is the resolution. On the other hand, the modest production is more entertaining than the bewilderingly successful tedious Norwegian snowbound slasher COLD PREY.

Eric Cotenas

Posters

Theatrical Release: 3 October 2011 (UK)

Reviews         DVD Reviews

DVD Review: Chelsea Films - Region 2 - PAL

Big thanks to Eric Cotenas for the Review!

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Distribution

Chelsea Films

Region 2 - PAL

Runtime 1:14:09 (4% PAL speedup)
Video

2.34:1 Original Aspect Ratio

16X9 enhanced
Average Bitrate: 5.3 mb/s
PAL 720x576 25.00 f/s

NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.

Bitrate

Audio English Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles none
Features Release Information:
Studio: Chelsea Films

Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen anamorphic - 2.34:1

Edition Details:
• Making-of (16:9; 8:36)

DVD Release Date: October 3rd, 2011
Amaray

Chapters 12

 

Comments

Shot on the Canon 7D digital SLR still camera, the digitally color-corrected and modified BLOOD RUNS COLD adapts well to the standard definition DVD. The English 5.1 track is typically forceful, with a nice deployment of the music score and strange offscreen noises.

The making-of featurette shows the on-set lighting and reveals just how much of the film's look was created in post-production (although the sight of the Canon digital SLR being used to shoot scenes isn't too impressive). Unlike the feature, the featurette is in Swedish with occasional English subtitles. It is a compilation of behind the scenes video with no guiding narration or interviews. There is no trailer.

  - Eric Cotenas

 


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Distribution

Chelsea Films

Region 2 - PAL

 




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