The Chill Factor Blu-ray

OMG do not be fooled by the incredible cover art. I love you cover. I hate you film. Boredom has reached new heights and it’s relentless. I’m happy review number 1 had a good time but I’ve been left out in the cold on this one.

‘The Chill Factor’ aka ‘Demon Possessed’, while initially receiving a decidedly chilly, ‘blink-and-you-will-miss-it’ debut on VHS in back in ‘93 was honourably salvaged from undeserved celluloid obscurity with a beautifully restored Blu-ray presentation in 2018 which made for a welcome improvement over the rather inauspicious-looking DVD-R bootleg previously available. During the ‘The Chill Factor’s’ soothingly monotonous, neo-noirish prologue the viewer learns bemusedly from our perfectly perky, blonde-mopped orator Jeannie (Dawn Laurie) that while sojourning with her fellow snowmobiling chums, she had been very much in love with her dreamily handsome collegiate beau Tom (Aaron Kjenaas), reciting blandly that ‘...the year 2000 was just around the corner and maybe we were all a little crazy! I was young and I was pretty and I could drive a sled better than any of them!’ This jarringly absurd opening gambit might seem incongruent to some, but for reasons still a little obscure I enjoyed it immensely! After some enjoyably acid sniping amongst our querulous, ‘trope-ful’ clique of speed-crazed snow-bunnies, a raucously daredevil Snowmobile race lures them fatefully to the eerily desolated, ice-bound expanse known as Friars Lake and with inclement night falling frostily to compound their miseries they must soon find suitable shelter, not yet realising that said storm would be occult-born and the terrors awaiting them within the dismally inhospitable, eminently Slasher-worthy abandoned lodge would soon test the group’s resolve to breaking point! What bloodily ensues is some righteously frosty, brimstone-singed, Ouija-spawned slasher mayhem and stalwart director/producer Christopher Webster bravely takes a dry, largely humourless, appropriately glacial approach to all the celluloid carnage, and it is ‘The Chill Factor’s’ apparently deliberate lack of irony which lends the wonderfully screwy, low-budget horror film with some additional thematic gravitas few might initially expect. While the ‘actors’ performances are earnest enough, their woeful dearth of nuance does frequently allow for unintentional levity, but overall the standard of filmmaking is outstanding. ‘The Chill Factor’s’ three snow-glistering highlights being the spirited, demon-raising soundtrack by John Tatgenhorst and the superb lighting by gifted DOP Joseph Friedman, especially chill-inducing are the deliciously spooky, Raimi-esque cabin interiors, with Friedman’s expert lensing maximizing the splashy crimson punch of lurid SPFX by no less credible makeup artist Jeffrey Lyle Segal.