Cold Blows the Wind review.
Coming to Video on Demand July 2, Cold Blows the Wind throws a night of supernatural vengeance at a newly deserving couple.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Cold Blows the Wind
Directed by Eric Williford
Written by Eric Williford
Starring Victoria Vertuga, Danell Leyva, Jamie Bernadette, Torrey B. Lawrence, Brandon Tyler Jones and Daniel Florenzano
Cold Blows the Wind Review
Horror movies usually choose to feature protagonists that are easy to root for. Characters who find themselves in terrible circumstances that they do not deserve. It’s rarer to present leads who make questionable choices that lead to their own downfall. I Know What You Did Last Summer is an obvious example. You may like the young cast…but they make a bad decision that leads them to their downfalls. Cold Blows the Wind takes a similar path. A path that leads to far crazier ideas than a fisherman with a hook hand stalking teens through town.
Dean (Danell Leyva) and Tasha (Victoria Vertuga) just wanted to celebrate Tasha’s birthday. Those plans are quickly sidetracked when they hit a jogger while driving. Dean is afraid the man will tell the authorities what happened. Tasha wants to see if he even knows that it was them that hit him in the first place. He does. And all Hell is about to break loose.
Cold Blows the Wind gives its leads an early out. They can still do the right thing when the story begins. The jogger is still alive when they arrive home. A temporary bad choice is more forgivable than a permanent one. Had they gotten the man help…they could have avoided an escalating situation they couldn’t have prepared for. Unfortunately, Dean sees the jogger as a threat. He kills him in cold blood in front of Tasha. She, begrudgingly, goes along with his plan to bury the body and clean up the evidence.
From that moment on the couple is on the hook for any vengeance that comes their way. Even of the completely insane variety that Cold Blows the Wind deals in. Things divorce from reality…and become deadly…to a point where you’d imagine Dean and Tasha would have made different choices had they known what was to come. They aren’t thinking about that when they’re digging a grave and sopping up blood from the floor of their home.
It probably doesn’t take long for the thought to cross their minds, however. Almost immediately, a strange woman named Briar (Jame Bernadette) knocks on their door. She claims she needs their help. Dean wants no part of the intrusion. Tasha sees this as a chance for the couple to try and redeem themselves. Point to Dean on this one…though shutting Briar out likely wouldn’t have done much more than delay the inevitable.
Briar says a mean man is after her and has the scars to prove it. She also claims to know that the couple buried a body in the woods. Which would be bad enough if it wasn’t just the tip of the iceberg. Things tend to not stay dead in the woods, she tells them. A tough thing to hear when you just deposited a body there. Dean heads out to investigate the outer threat. Tasha is left to deal with the threat already on the inside.
The couple is desperate to keep their bad deed a secret. They have no idea what they’ve stumbled into. Cold Blows the Wind ratchets up the tension by throwing unexpected supernatural twists into the plot. Briar isn’t what she appears to be. Neither are the woods where Dean and Tasha planted their darkest secret. A bad decision places them in the path of some earned payback. The atmosphere, combined with a sense that anything can happen, gives the movie strong momentum. The actors do well within their constantly changing circumstances. Without getting into spoilers…some people get to play very different versions of their characters. It’s a fresh take on decent people who break bad in the heat of a tough moment…and reap immediate comeuppance for it.
Cold Blows the Wind also features some fine practical gore effects. From dismemberment to gnawing on an arm…the blood that flows is realistic and effective. There are fun twists and turns throughout the story. Tasha is (literally) haunted by their choices. Dean is too busy trying to keep them covered up to notice that things are far worse than they appear. Briar is…something else entirely. A strange woman who knows too much about things she couldn’t know…and has an even stranger demand for that information to remain a secret. Cold Blows the Wind rushes from interesting turn to unexpected twist.
Scare Value
The supernatural surprises keep the eerie vibe going strong throughout Cold Blows the Wind. There’s something wrong in the woods. There’s something wrong in the house. Worst of all…there’s something wrong inside of these people. One bad decision begets a night of (partially deserved) murder and torment.
3.5/5
