The Chill Factor (1993)

 

Director: Christopher Webster

Screenplay: Julian Weaver

Cast: Dawn Laurrie as Jeannie; Aaron Kjenaas as Tom; Connie Snyder as Karen; David Fields as Chris; Eve Montgomery as Lissa; Jim Cagle as Ron; Bekki Vallin as Bessie  

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #242

 

Football players don't get lost. They know where the end zone is.

Throw a metaphorical stone, and you will hit a slasher film from the eighties due to how many were made. Even into the nineties, this horror sub-genre was still being increased even if some of the titles were obscure, and that for myself there is a cut-off point from the original slasher wave to watch revived them in the post-Scream era to bring them into a new perspective. The Chill Factor is admittedly a different type, more of a supernatural horror film which just happens to include people being picked off one-by-one.

With an opening credit instrumental, a lovely piano piece, sounding more romantic drama than horror, The Chill Factor is not a radical change in pace for these types of films, but it is interesting to find one which is a regional horror trying for its idiosyncrasy. In this case, a Wisconsin this late in time when regional horror films for me (outside of the micro-budget) are a concept I have painted as between the seventies and eighties. Structured with a survivor of the narrative near 2000, which is fascinating, unless my hearing was faulty, represents one of the female characters but is a male voice with that never being brought in, you have a group of young adults on a motor sled expedition in a snowy environment shot in Sugar Camp, Wisconsin. A drunken bet between two of the men to race their motor sleds leads to one of them being badly injured, in the middle of nowhere forced as a group to keep him warm and safe in his unconscious state in an abandoned lodge previously occupied by a Christian camp group until they can get medical help. An ominous place, with deer heads on the wall and a giant bleeding crucifix statue of Jesus Christ, someone finds a "Devil's Eye" board whilst they are waiting the night. This is an object within the context of this film, which I struggled to find information, which is a form of Ouija board with a spinning centre that acts like a wheel of fortune.

As a result of tampering with it, part of the trope of never messing with the dead, they begin being picked off in gruesome ways by a malignant force, including someone getting an icicle to the eye. The film's subdued, moody tone does change the presentation, only occasionally revealing its goofiness at times, be it a character spotting rocking a Satanist black costume with hood, or when the score inexplicably starts to sound like Three Blind Mice. There is some starkness but also a lot where this goes into tangents which never play out in any true way - such as in that one of the men, a praised American football player, is dating an African American girl from out the region who, even if she stands up for herself, gets hassled by a legitimately racist drunk guy in the bar we briefly have a scene in, with even a knifing involved in the scuffle. For the most part, none of this is of consequence to the film, with even the local barmaid apologising and hoping to give them hospitality, even if one character's ethnicity does get brought up a couple of times for no reason intention of tackling what it would be like for her to be an outsider to an all-white community, the one moment where any viewing wishing to raise a concern of this film being dubious has justifiable weight to even if it feels more a case of the production not thinking through things it wanted to tackle in the narrative at all. The only thing from the prologue which surprisingly gets a bit of weight to it is that one of the male leads, who is the one injured in the accident, clearly has incestous longings for his sister, which come out when ultimately possessed and leads to him becoming a sex pervert in thought. The Chill Factor is not a really extreme film, but even with following the trope of the original slashers of having some titillation, in this case you also have to put it in context of some really psycho dramatic perverseness too.   

In what you get, The Chill Factor is curious in how for a large swathe this is a slow burn, taking a while to fully set up its final act, the slasher film template taking a while to appear and becoming the more lurid work as, with characters being picked off, it is not a killer however but supernatural "accidents" like the ceiling fan lowering and slicing someone up. For me, the mood, especially with this being a film of its local flavour, is the thing that I came to admire even if, truthfully, most will find this an extremely slow film. It does feel out of time just by having been officially released in the nineties, which is the really curious thing for me to leave this review on.