A struggling writer takes a job in a convenience store and soon encounters its owner, the enigmatic and sinister Dr Muñoz, who has a rare and unnamed skin condition that forces him to live in sub-zero temperatures. Soon after Sam’s arrival he falls for Maria, the owner of the clothes store across the street, but their burgeoning relationship is hampered by a series of disappearances that the investigating detective Maria’s ex is determined to link back to Sam, while the actual threat being much closer than they realised.
The idea of a film adapted from an HP Lovecraft story is often a lot more appealing than the eventual outcome. Most famous are the tales of eldritch abominations of such unfathomable hideousness that merely beholding them is to know madness, so any adaptation will have quite a lot to live up to, even if, like Chill, they don’t contain any aspects of cosmological horror.
Cool Air was one of Lovecraft’s tales written while living in abject misery in New York and as a result was one of his less memorable and indistinct works. What little of the film that actually takes its cue from the story gives little of the sense of underlying dread that permeates Lovecraft’s work, and other than an obligatory throwaway reference to the Necronomicon there’s almost nothing to connect it to them. Even the violence is too low-key to provide any real shocks.
In the scenes between Sam and Maria, we are subjected to one of the least convincing screen romances since the Ben Affleck/Jennifer Lopez train wreck that was Gigli. That said, despite the sub-par script, genre stalwart Ashley Laurence (of Hellraiser fame) gives one of the most convincing performances in the film, and it also must be said is looking pretty damn nubile for a woman on the far side of 40. James Russo’s Detective Defazio is a police officer of the overly macho and unreasonable breed who you just can’t wait to see gutted. Shaun Kurtz as Dr Muñoz had a great deal more potential and would likely have at least partially achieved it if most of his story wasn’t recounted in incoherent flashbacks telling of his determination to “complete my work.
The visual effects are some of the most amateurish you’re ever likely to see, some even looking like they were rendered on Photoshop, and are so sloppily edited in that MST3K would pass up mocking them, as well as the rest of the film, on account of it being too easy.
Overall Verdict: Even Chill’s tangential association to Lovecraft does not give it any distinction beyond a generic pseudo-supernatural horror story. If a Lovecraft adaptation featuring a brilliant but insane doctor obsessing about mastery over death is your thing, you’d be a lot better off watching Re-Animator.
Special Features:
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Reviewer: Andrew Marshall