By Simon Thompson
Writer/director Christian Jude Grillo’s A Cold Season is a foreboding Christmas themed horror-thriller in the tradition of Black Christmas, The Silent Partner, Batman Returns and Gremlins.
Taking place in media res, A Cold Season starts with the protagonist Jacob (Andrew Hunsicker), a lonely middle aged man with a dark secret, being interviewed in a police station about the events leading up to him being in this situation. Over the next eighty minutes the audience is thrust into Jacob’s world, as we see him commit a grizzly series of murders over the run up to Christmas.
Tonally, A Cold Season is a mixture of horror and comedy as dark as Dale Cooper’s coffee of choice. Grillo juxtaposes the joy associated with Christmas as a holiday with the dark reality of Jacob’s crimes having festive music playing in his car as he drives around town with a dead body wrapped up in his boot. As the story unravels, the audience is made to question the reliability of Jacob as a narrator, as over the course of the story it becomes clear that the man is insane once he starts hallucinating a sunglasses-wearing Father Christmas (also played by Andrew Hunsicker) who admonishes him for getting sloppy with his crimes, and constantly communicates with him Elvis in True Romance style.
Filmed in wintertime Pennsylvania, the bitter cold and snow of the setting perfectly complements Jacob’s isolation, as well as doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to creating atmosphere and dread. If autumn is the best season of the year to set a horror movie, then winter is a comfortable runner up, as the snow, grey skies, and relentless cold makes it uninvitingly hostile, a concept which Grillo fully understands.
Andrew Hunsicker gives a compelling performance as both Jacob and his Father Christmas attired alter ego at the same time, made all the more impressive by Hunsicker being able to jump between the quiet understated nature of the former and the bombastic malice of the latter, and make it look easy. Because of Hunsicker’s performance and Grillo’s script, Jacob isn’t your typical run of the mill slasher killer, as shown by his genuinely warm relationship with his elderly neighbour Julie ( Clair O’Neill) which adds depth to his character.
The main issue With A Cold Season however, is that the third act comes across as rushed and clumsily tacked on. While it does offer shock value to an extent, it goes to show that the story could have benefitted from an extra half an hour to be able to connect it more successfully to the first and second acts. While the first half of the movie is engaging, the last twenty five minutes are frustrating enough to erode the good will that it cultivated.
