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THE CHILL FACTOR

SNOWMOBILE ENTHUSIASTS ARE TRAPPED IN AN ANCIENT, SATANIC KID'S CAMP



★☆☆☆☆ (Kill It with Fire)

Director: Christopher Webster

1993



I‘m a patient movie-watcher. Though I may not have been able to get through the first 15 minutes of The Majorettes or Blood Lake or Ski Wolf, I have suffered through Halloweed and Saturday the 14th. My tastes are all over the place, but I prefer vintage, gimmicky slasher films, so The Chill Factor was right up my alley. Three couples heading out to a remote area on their snowmobiles only to get snowed-in at an abandoned home for satanic monks sounds amazing, right? Unfortunately, it has the distinction of being the only horror movie to put me to sleep. Sure, it was only for a few minutes, but when I woke up, I hadn’t missed anything and that tells you everything. The Chill Factor was a project for bored, snowbunny filmmakers who put more thought into the bitchin’ snowmobile chases than the plot. By the second act, any semblance of a story melts in your hands like…well, you know. The actors are as bad as those in a parody, and the one cool kill is at the end, but it’s too little, too late.



SPOILERS A woman named Jeannie, who is involved in the following events, narrates the story, and this means she’s either a survivor or this is an American Beauty situation. Either way, her dull voice and unnecessary droning drags down the plot and are a substitute for actual dialogue between characters that should give the movie momentum. She explains she has regrets in life right before we’re taken to the first scene at a lodge, where Jeannie, her boyfriend Tom, and their four friends stop to eat after shredding some tubular hills on their snowmobiles. Here is where I’d like to thank The Chill Factor for having one of the men (Ron) stand up for his Black girlfriend when she’s hassled in the bar—but did they really have to have the bad guy say the n-word? Lissa shrugs and says this happens to her all the time, and this is officially the last bit of reality you will get out of The Chill Factor.


The owner of the eatery, Bessy (remember that name), tells the three couples about a cool, isolated place to ride and that’s where they go, and everything is totally rad until Tom smashes his faces into a tree. The guy’s unconscious and there’s a gnarly storm brewing, so the party heads to the nearest shelter they can find: an abandoned monk’s satanic church that once fronted as a kid’s camp. That’s a lot to unpack, but I promise it will mean nothing. Once snowed in, the uninspired killings are slow to happen, and there’s nothing tying them but a spooky board game they all play to pass the time. We suspect a possessed Tom of being connected to the killer shadow in a Klansman hood running around, but we never see who or what it is. The guy is comatose when the killings begin, so it’s not him.


Exposition is attempted by a character reading a diary that mentions kids having trouble in the camp (including Bessy, who we never see after the first scene), leading to the camp’s demise. The diary gives us hints that there was supposed to be a mystery in this movie, an infuriating realization when none of the later events are connected to it. The Chill Factor is a lot of foreplay with no follow-though. I haven’t been this unsatisfied since prom night.


“THE DIARY GIVES US HINTS THAT THERE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A MYSTERY IN THIS MOVIE, AN INFURIATING REALIZATION WHEN NONE OF THE LATER EVENTS ARE CONNECTED TO IT.”


A low-budget horror movie can be redeemed by a cohesive and fun story. It took me two minutes to come up with my own version of The Chill Factor, below:


Bessy, the owner of the bar, tells the couples to head out to the isolated trail knowing that there’s a storm coming, hoping they’ll get trapped. As the snow moves in, all six people find refuge in a spooky building that used to be part of an old kid’s camp. They make a fire and find clues that lead them to believe that children were being sacrificed to the devil and that’s why the place closed. A diary reveals that the owner was Bessy’s father. Obviously deranged (and hoping to bring back the camp’s past glory and get revenge), she sneaks onto the property, and has the devil posses one of the partygoers, who kills one friend after another until a final showdown between Jeannie and Bessy on snowmobiles in the woods.


There, I fixed it for you.


This movie is so untethered and opportunities for tension are so squandered that I almost feel like the filmmakers were trying to fail on purpose. No one is this incompetent. The Chill Factor is like a warm fire in a snowy lodge flickering in front of you, lulling you to sleep.






GENRES: Diverse Characters, Monster/Creature


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