Having watched the excellent Bakemono earlier today (at the time of typing), I figured my luck had ended and that the next film on my watching schedule, Cold Blows the Wind, would likely turn out to be nothing special. After a strange start, this surreal horror really sunk its teeth into me. Written and directed by Eric Williford, and with a title that is bizarrely taken from a Ween song of all things, this strode a fine line between jet black humour and outright craziness.
Late one night, Dean (Danell Leyva) and his wife Tasha (Victoria Vertuga) arrive at the remote holiday home of Dean's parents with a body in the trunk of their car. They had been involved in an earlier hit and run incident, and having apparently killed a pedestrian they had decided to bring the body with them, to bury in woodland near the home. The victim turns out not to be quite as dead as they had assumed, but when he recognises them for what they had done, Dean stabs the man to death. Not long after burying the body, the pair are interrupted by frantic knocking at the door, they open it to find a woman, Briar (Jamie Bernadette - Ash and Bone). She tells them she is being chased by a man, and asks to hide out at their home. It isn't long before she reveals that she saw the pair burying the body earlier that night, and that bizarrely the single only way to get her not to tell the police is to kill her. This is just the start of the strangest and most horrific night of Dean and Tasha's lives.
There is a sub-genre of horror that has typically normal people getting caught up in crime, often via accidentally killing people, and then following them to their inevitable destruction as they try to hide the evidence whilst being eaten up with guilt. I'm thankful that is not the path the two protagonists take as they come across as remorseless sociopaths straight away. Despite them both claiming to be 'normal' people, neither shows any sign of guilt for what they have done. Dean is amusingly quick to resort to murder, and Tasha's reaction to this is irritation and annoyance rather than shock and horror. The second piece of the horror puzzle here however is wonderful demonic possession, not much of a spoiler as the movie opens with an obviously evil Briar speaking a curse into the camera, the actual hit and run moment of the film is never actually shown and just revealed slowly via conversations between the two lead characters. In my head canon, this took place just down the road from where the events of The Evil Dead are concurrently taking place. Obviously, that isn't the case at all, but the probable demonic possession here shares a cruel sense of amusement, with Briar's unsettling and creepy manner immediately making her seem like bad news.
There were four key characters here, and all of them were played wonderfully. My favourite was Torrey B. Lawrence as Uncle Stevie, a very creepy giant of a man who turns up at the house looking for Briar at one point, he really stole his scenes. I also thought Bernadette was great in her role, I loved the playful way she spoke. Poor Dean became almost comic relief, away from some pivotal scenes of the movie, his meek manner was counter balanced against his over the top actions, and some of his lines were designed for black humour, such as when he is complaining to himself about all the graves he has ended up digging that night. Then there is Tasha, the most weird of the lot, somehow even more remorseless than Dean, things couldn't have happened to a more deserving couple!
There is lots of blood and gore here, including a good looking scene in which a corpse is being cut up via the use of a hacksaw. Plenty of stabbings, stranglings, and occasional nudity make for some twisted and surreal moments. I didn't expect lightning to strike twice with regards to my choice of films to be watched for review this weekend, but I thought Cold Blows the Wind was a great horror that never took itself too seriously. The whole demonic possession part of this was wonderfully done, with little explanation, that really suited the films path. After an odd beginning, this dance into the Twilight Zone just got stranger and stranger, all the way up to the somewhat cheesy nineties feeling end scene. Cold Blows the Wind is an award winning horror (including 'Best Feature' at Horror Hound 2023), and is having an exclusive release on the film's website ahead of its VOD release.
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