By Simon Thompson
Gustavo Sampaio’s The Coldness is an anaemic piece of found footage horror, with the only thing going for it being its merciful one hour and fifteen minute running time. Predictable and turgidly paced, this is a movie which, despite its title I would, ironically, rather watch incinerated. If any piece of filmmaking is reminiscent of something that Neil Breen, or Mac and Charlie from Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia would make, then you know that a million things have gone wrong along the way and to be very afraid of the end result.
The Coldness centres around a retired New Jersey police detective named Nick Polito (played by the film’s scriptwriter Paul Parducci), who has moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles due to a gruesome death similar to an unsolved case he worked on over twenty years ago and has been obsessed with ever since. While in California, Nick reunites with his former partner and encounters a sinister and strange group of various characters who lead him down a dark and foreboding path.
The Coldness suffers from a complete lack of suspense and atmosphere, even when Sampaio and Parducci are trying to make the audience feel a sense of peril, the drab and at times laughable, script combined with the lifeless cinematography are dependably there to kill it stone dead faster than Image Comics cancelling most of its good titles. This is a movie which doesn’t have characters, it has stock cliches, such as the burnt out retired obsessive cop ( bonus points for him being a widower), or the sinister witch who can only speak in veiled clues – rather than three dimensional compelling characters who you would actually want to find out more about.
If you’re idea of fun is watching a movie starring a rejected Sopranos character wandering around California with a selfie-stick, recording himself like the world’s dullest version found-footage of Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding, then I’m sure you will have a blast. If, you want to watch a good movie, however, avoid The Coldness at all costs.
Bloody Flicks 