I shouldn't have watched Wind Chill so late in the afternoon. It was warm outside and we hadn't turned on our air conditioner yet so I was already slightly sleepy and rundown. Then I decided to pop this movie into the DVD player, and oh boy, did it bore me even more into sleepiness.

Wind Chill is the story of two college students driving home for Christmas break who become stranded on a road off the highway after getting into a wreck. Trapped in the car to escape the desperate cold, the two soon begin to experience ghostly encounters from some unhelpful motorists and one relentless highway patrolman.

The leads in this movie are played by Emily Blunt, whom I grew to love after seeing her in The Devil Wears Prada, and Ashton Holmes, whom I have never heard of before. Their characters are not given names and are credited only as "Girl" and "Guy." In fact, none of the characters in the movie are named - even in the first scene where Girl is texting somebody in class, no name pops up on her cell phone screen, just the phone number.  It was weird because I didn't even notice this no-name thing until about halfway into it, which probably had the opposite affect on me than the filmmakers intended. I suppose they wanted the audience just to focus on who these characters were and their interaction with each other but I couldn't find myself to give a damn because I didn't like either of them from the moment they opened their mouths.

I mean, I guess Blunt does an okay job with the acting thing but there is just nothing here for her to work with to make a compelling and interesting movie. The pace is unbearably slow for the most part and even the "exciting" moments are not nearly exciting enough for my liking. The instances with the ghosts are indeed strange and off-putting but they come in lieu of absolutely no scares and no tension.

The setting doesn't even help with this important element of the movie, when it really should have. It's late at night a few days before Christmas with snow everywhere and a temperature way below zero, but the movie never feels cold like it should to put the audience in the shoes of the characters. Wind Chill has the look, and Guy and Girl sure act like they're cold sometimes but the situation never feels dire enough. However, the makeup effects on the ghosts and the dead bodies that Guy comes across in the rundown house look really good. Well, I guess that gives the movie one point.

I'm not stoked enough about Wind Chill to try to analyze the movie like I usually do, but I will offer up one suggestion that was at the back of my mind throughout. Girl and Guy have a pretty telling conversation at the beginning when they are talking about their philosophy class and the difference between reincarnation and eternal recurrence. It's one of those red flags that screams to the audience "HEY! Pay attention to this part! This is what the movie is about!" Anyway, this kind of leads me to the theory that maybe Guy is a ghost too. The way he seems to know everything about her could be from his crazy stalkerish ways or maybe it's the whole eternal recurrence thing where he's been reliving his first meeting with Girl over and over again. Eh, I don't really care, it's just a thought.

So for me, Wind Chill was a miss. It could have been a lot more interesting but it's too slow and dull for most of the movie and when the cool stuff finally does show up, it's not enough to make up for the movie's flaws.

Movie Review: Wind Chill (2007). There are any Movie Review: Wind Chill (2007) in here.