Single location movies, such as Fall, Buried, Frozen, and Locke, are a hard tightrope to walk. You have to have amazing performances from your actors to move the film along, while also a strong script and director to keep an audience engaged throughout its running time. It’s easy to get bored when there’s only one or two people on the screen and the location hasn’t changed. However, with enough suspense and tension, you might have something really special on your hands.
Written by Sébastien Drouin, James Kermack (Afghanistan, Knuckledust), and Andrew Desmond (The Sonata, Asylum: Twisted Horror and Fantasy Tales), and directed by Sébastien Drouin (Knuckledust, Hi-Lo Joe), Cold Meat is a white-knuckle thriller that’s full of twists, turns, and anxiety-filled tension. It’s a prime example of what you could do with two characters, a car, and a brutal blizzard.
Set just before Christmas, Cold Meat follows David, played by Allen Leech (Downton Abbey: A New Era, Bohemian Rhapsody), a humdrum bookworm-type who saves a waitress named Ana, played by Nina Bergman (Seize the Night, The Beautiful Ones), after her ex-boyfriend Vincent, played by Yan Tual (La Fortaleza, Rifkin’s Festival) violently confronts a Rocky Mountain truck stop diner just before closing.
However, when David leaves the diner, Vincent follows him through the very remote roads in the Rockies. David quickly becomes stranded after he outsmarts the ex, but suddenly finds himself injured and being stalked by a mysterious presence.
French writer/director Drouin has to be applauded for putting together an effective and intense thriller. The film is taught, smart, and relies on pure filmmaking and storytelling to convey a grizzly tale of survival — especially one that’s very sparse with dialogue. Cold Meat is told through action and movement that’s rightfully creepy with an oddball sense of humor injected to keep an audience engaged with the story.
The movie is full of genuine surprises that may be more satisfying with repeat viewing, but at the end of the day, it’s a genre exercise with skillful craftsmanship and a sharp wit. And thanks to its snowy and ice cold settings in the Rocky Mountains, Drouin creates a real sense of atmosphere and places with the mise-en-scène inside and outside of the car. Meanwhile, the performances from Leech and Bergman really make Cold Meat come together, as a story of survival, choices, and regret.
Although the film spins its wheels just a little bit, like a car trying to get out of a snowbank, the tone and construction makes Cold Meat worth watching for genre fans and general audiences alike. There’s a real sense of danger, terror, and mystery surrounding the film, which works very well. However, there are small nitpicks that are pretty minor, which comes towards the end of the film, the overall experience is what’s lasting and worth a recommendation.
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