Cold Comfort

Very good, very creepy movie. I went into it thinking about Stephen King's Misery (although I've only read the book, not seen the film), but I forgot about it right away. The performances of the three leads are excellent; I've yet to be disappointed in anything Maury Chaykin has done, and here he's fantastic as the psychopathic, insecure Floyd Lucas. Paul Gross, early in his career (I believe this was his first feature film), is already demonstrating the talent that will help him become one of the most popular actors in Canada. I've never seen Margaret Langrick in any other film, but she was very good in her role as Floyd's damaged and conflicted daughter.

The setting is dark and bleak; the small glimpses of comic relief emphasize the creepiness of the story and the desperateness of Stephen's situation. I'm a fan of psychological thrillers; this was a good one. If you don't like claustrophobic and dark, don't see it, but I recommend it to anyone who does and wants to see the genre done right.

Also, as a response to the reviewer before me: the film is set in Alberta, not Alaska, and Stephen Miller is a travelling salesman, not an escaped convict.

What can i say... this movie is done very well. The acting is superb, the characters are eerily believable, and the situation is thought provoking and imaginative. This movie goes places we don't like to think about. It does a better job of portraying despair and isolation than any movie i've ever seen.

It will leave you feeling cold, but Hopeful.

Incredible!

Don't believe any of the other reviews posted here, which are - for some unfathomable reason - all full of praise for this major piece of Dreck.

Another one of those imbecilic films in which an innocent passer-by is kept imprisoned in a house somewhere in the middle of nowhere. This is one of the worst sub-sub-genres of them all. It's bad enough to watch a dumb thriller, but when it's this kind it really doesn't get any worse. This brick-hard bundle of nonsense may be one of the five worst films I've ever seen, and I've seen several thousand - unlike some IMDb reviewers out there who get excited about just about anything. The characterization is straight out of the "Guide For Making Bad Z-Movies". The plot is totally predictable, the motivations of the characters muddled - or most likely non-existent - and there is some rather inept acting. The award-winningly absurd premise includes an 18 year-old girl who never met anyone apart from her fat father and his chained dogs, yet seems cheerful and well-adjusted enough (all things considering). Duh! This kind of plot has been done badly before but this dumbfest redefines how much worse an already idiotic premise can be made if one tries hard enough. Clearly, the effort has been made in that direction, in this case. It isn't hard to "top" this junk - it is practically impossible.

Remember the old joke about a traveling salesman and the farmer's daughter? Well, this Canadian movie kind of takes the basic premise of that joke and manages to somehow combine it with Stephen King's "Misery" (this movie came out after the novel, but before the official film adaptation). Amazingly though, the whole thing kind of works because it is well-filmed and well-acted, especially by journeyman Canadian character actor Maury Chaykin.

A traveling salesman (Paul Gross) goes off the road in a storm. He is rescued by a weird tow-truck driver (i.e. not actually a farmer) played by Maury Chaykin. The tow-truck driver takes him to his isolated snowbound home where he strangely wants him to be a "birthday present" for his 18-year-old daughter (Margaret Langrick, who had previously appeared as the daughter in the family bigfoot comedy "Harry and the Hendersons"). This, of course, is every traveling salesman's worst nightmare! But the movie ultimately doesn't try for out-and-out horror (which would have immediately turned to camp), but neither is this some "erotic thriller" sex fantasy. Instead it's something more unusual--a very eccentric three character drama. Chaykin is a pretty scary and a very unpredictable character, so it's completely believable that the salesman would have no idea what to do when the daughter starts doing a striptease for him at her birthday party while her drunken father hoots and shines a bright flashlight alternately on her and on him as he watches!

This movie may sound like a sex fantasy turned nightmare (kind of like the 70's exploitation film "Death Game"), but that's not quite accurate. It's more like a sex fantasy suddenly turned real in such a strange, unexpected way that the whole fantasy element is lost and the beleaguered protagonist really has NO IDEA how to react. There is a kind of nightmare element in that the protagonist is injured and held prisoner, but it's not the usual psycho thing. It's a pretty interesting movie actually. Gross is pretty good. Langrick is also good (and has nude scenes). But the best thing here is Chaykin who went on to do some interesting stuff, mostly in Canada, for directors like Atom Egoyan ("The Adjustor", "The Sweet Hereafter"). See this if you have the opportunity.

If you're in the market for a Misery rip-off with uninteresting characters, massive overacting and a complete flop of an ending, this might be the movie for you.

Otherwise, give it a miss. 3/10