Wind Chill Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Wind Chill Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman February 16, 2021

'Wind Chill' is currently only available from Mil Creek as part of a three film bundle with 'Straightheads' (or 'Closure') and 'Perfect Stranger.'

A college girl (Emily Blunt) pulls a phone number from a flyer for a ride share to Delaware two days before Christmas. She’s two hours late for the trip and is upset when her ride is an old, cold, and overstuffed car. She’s not fond of the driver, either, a young man (Ashton Holmes) who seems to want nothing more than to cozy up to her. She, in turn, is standoffish, complains on the phone about her ride, and is irritated when her diver asks her to simply chat for a bit. In her defense, he’s a little bit on the creepy side. He seems to like her and know things about her that he shouldn’t even though he claims they were in a class together (it was as big as Woodstock, she responds, disbelieving his story). She quickly comes to believe that there’s something wrong with him and his motivations in giving her a ride, but the nightmare road trip is only beginning when they’re run off the road in the middle of snowy, frigid nowhere where the couple have to put aside their differences in a fight for survival against a supernatural foe.

Wind Chill Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

For this Blu-ray release of Wind Chill, Mill Creek has utilized the antiquated MPEG-2 encoding format and additionally crammed the film onto a single disc with two others. It would seem to have the odds stacked against it, but this is a surprisingly rich picture, one that is faithfully filmic. It helps that it features a simple aesthetic. Much of the picture takes place at night and in low light, bathed in blue and gray and black. It's here where the picture does show some of its inherent limitations where some compression artifacts are visible in the darker backdrops, though not so dense or intrusive as to break the illusion. The picture holds up quite nicely in the aggregate, though, showing solid foundational details on faces and clothes with some quality definition to intimate features like pores and hairs. Colors are fair in brighter scenes – the opening minutes, for example, as the girl gets into the car prior to nighttime – while some splashes of color in low light – a red sweater, some blood – enjoy good saturation even in low light. Black level depth is strong, never surrendering to lighter output, while skin tones appear accurate to any given scene's lighting. There are a few source splotches here and there but such are minimal for the run. This is not a bad image at all.

Wind Chill Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Dolby Digital 5.1 lossless soundtrack shows its limitations fairly early on. There's not much to ambience – at least not well defined or detailed or even lifelike -- such as head in car ride interiors or, later, when chilly winds blow in establishing shots. But essential elements like dialogue come across fine. The spoken word never wants for far superior clarity or prioritization at reference listening level. The track gains some depth and stretch during a crash in the 20-minute mark, but the track's best moment comes in the 61-minute mark when an intense pounding sound, accompanied by deep rumbles and heavy score, appear to come from all over. It's very fluid but also very focused, outputting both discrete elements and an overall sense of terrifying audio immersion. The track could stand some added finesse – the absence of a lossless encode robs it of its finer point details – but this not at all a poor presentation despite the inherent encode limitations.

Wind Chill Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

As it is included in the three-film collection, there are no supplements to be found for this film or with either of the other two films on the disc.

Wind Chill Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Wind Chill suddenly shifts gears in its second act to fold in supernatural Horrors. The film is more interesting in its dueling character studies which it introduces in the first act and gradually develops as the boy and girl are trapped in the car with little hope of escape, particularly once strange things begin to happen around them. The film builds a capable yarn that's not so chilly as its climate but it does string together some capable surface scares and benefits from a couple of solid lead performances. Mill Creek's featureless Blu-ray excels beyond its superficial limitations to provide enjoyable audio and video output. Recommended.