COLD BLOWS THE WIND (2024)

New On Demand from Lion Heart Distribution!
Directed/Written by Eric Williford.
Starring Jamie Bernadette, Victoria Vertuga, Summer Moore, Torrey B. Lawrence, Danell Leyva, Daniel Florenzano, Brandon Tyler Jones
Check out the trailer here!!

A couple (Vistoria Vertuga and Danell Leyva) accidentally hit a jogger while on vacation and attempt to cover it up by burying the body in the middle of a forest. But little do they know, anything buried in that land doesn’t stay dead long.

COLD BLOWS THE WIND has a familiar PET SEMETARY-like plot, but is able to communicate those big ideas with a compacted and smaller scale story. And that is something a lot of low budget films don’t get right. Often they reach outside of the range of the filmmakers’ budget and abilities, but filmmaker Eric Williford is able to wrangle in a lot of good atmosphere and fun concepts into this smaller scale thriller.

I think this film would have made an awesome installment of CREEPSHOW or ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, but the concept is stretched a bit, especially in the middle portion where the couple are separated and they both experience weird things apart from each other. The film picks up towards the end, but I felt that since we are told about the curse that plagues the land the couple buried the corpse in, it is pretty obvious what is going to happen. Still, the ending has a few shocks up its sleeve. Specifically, there is a scene involving some poo that I wish I could unsee.

The acting is rough at times. I feel some of the acting is not ready for prime time, especially in the parts reliant on heavy drama. Still, the people are pretty and they make up for the acting stumbles with some nudity, which is always a welcome surprise, as modern American cinema seems to have gone puritan in terms of showing the nude form.

While the concept is strong but familiar, the pacing and acting issues do bog COLD BLOWS THE WIND. I am interested in seeing what this filmmaker has coming up next as he knows how to stretch a budget and make it work. I’m giving this one a mild recommendation.