Cold Moon

"I never seen nothing like this. Well, you might want to have a little chat with the father. He's dead. In fact, he died in the sticks too, about 13 years ago. No, I mean the father of the baby she's carrying. This girl's about four months pregnant."

Not long ago I received an invitation to attend the premiere of "Cold Moon" in the company of the creators and actors, including Christopher Lloyd. Needless to say, I was slightly excited at that moment. Imagine me being in the same room together with one of my youth idols. Together in the same movie theater with Dr. Emmett Brown, the crazy professor who made the time-spiral unsafe with his converted Deloreon in "Back to the Future". Would I be as enthusiast about the movie in question, I would have been mad at myself for not booking a flight. Unfortunately, the enthusiasm was totally absent while watching the screener that was sent to me. Even though "Cold Moon" is similar to those cheap 80s vintage horror-films. I get melancholic when I think about that period. In those days, I always came home overloaded with a stack of rented VHS cassettes, after which I sat down in front of the TV the whole weekend.

"Cold moon" is an ordinary crime story that could serve as an episode in the Columbo series. However, there are also supernatural entities scaring the living sh*t out of the perpetrator (although he turns his back to them during most confrontations. Nerves of steel, I guess). And all this begins the day Margaret Larkin (Sara Catherine Bellamy) is on her way home and is being thrown into the local creek with her bike. She drowns on the spot. When her body is caught by a fisherman out of the water, it's the beginning of a search for the perpetrator (That shouldn't be such a hard task for the sheriff, since it's such a small community). Grandmother Evelyn Larkin (Candy Clark) points her accusatory finger at Nathan Redfield (Josh Stewart), son of James Redfield (Christopher Lloyd) tycoon and founder of the only bank there.

And at the same time, Margaret's wicked spirit winches itself out of the water and starts to haunt the killer. It's not entirely clear why Margaret returns as a revenge-seeking spirit. It's also unclear why the identity of the perpetrator was announced so quickly. In my opinion, the rest of the movie must be damn intriguing enough and of high quality when doing that. There's no tension anymore. And that's the big drawback in this movie. It's not really scary or thrilling. A horror without creepy moments or a frightening atmosphere can hardly be called a horror. Even though the apparitions and ghostly images are at times quite successful.

The acting performances are equivalent to that of the overall atmosphere of the film. Rather bland with a few exceptions. The only one who sort of made an impression was Josh Stewart. Although most of the time he walks around with sleepy, semi-closed eyes due to the amount of alcohol he consumed throughout the day. He doesn't look like a real manic psychopath, but his personality shows some dark sides. Christopher Lloyd's role is no big deal and is limited to a few minutes. The only thing he does is gaze at the local beauty queen (Rachel "Miss Pie" Brooke Smith) while jabbering unintelligible sentences. And then you have Evelyn (Candy Clark) and Jerry Larkin (Chester "My father die" Rushing), trying to run a blueberries farm. You can't say it's high-quality acting during their short-term presence. Especially Candy Clark was an annoying character who constantly acts hysterically after the death of her granddaughter.

"Cold Moon" isn't extremely bad, but it wasn't convincing either. Personally, I think the movie poster is brilliant, but overall the movie is just a weak attempt. The attempt to make some kind of horror didn't work well. The movie has nostalgic value. Certainly if you've experienced the 80's intensely when talking about horror movies. I'm sure you'll see this movie on some television channel in the middle of the night in the future. However, I wouldn't stay up for it.

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I think the actors deserve a better rating than the movie/script gave them. Illogical twists and mad entities included. I guess you could explain the latter with just being mean, but the way some of the characters have to behave is just plain wrong - in the wrongest sense possible.

And it's a bit of a shame because the actors really seem to give it their all. Be it Josh Stewart or anyone else from the cast. The advertising for the movie might have been missleading as some other user suggested, I never saw it, someone gave me the movie as a gift, so I went in there without any knowledge of it. I've seen worse ...

This was actually a pretty good movie. Not gory or any kind, but more chiller "I'll haunt you 'til you admit" type thing. A lot of nice twist and turns and it tells you who the killer is straight up, but it doesn't stray from the movie.

Michael McDowell was a master of creepy horror. Sadly this movie captures very little of the atmospheric crawling dread of the novel. It's OK, as far as B movies go, but doesn't quite capture the essence of the book.

The nice thing about Cold Moon is that it near immediately gripped me, this is a movie that got my attention early on.

Set during the late 80's the tale is told of a young murdered girl and her family seeking justice while the killer is besieged by terrifying apparitions.

The film looks beautiful with a decent cast including the living legend that is Christopher (Doc Brown, Uncle fester) Lloyd.

It delivers and is a very riveting interesting piece of cinema that thoroughly fell under the radar.

Sadly it gradually loses steam and when the vague and open to interpretation ending happens and the credits roll I was left finding myself sad that a few lose endings still remained.

Cold Moon is a decent enough film, I think it could have benefited from another 30 minutes to flesh it out but kudos to all involved for a damn fine effort.

The Good:

Very impressive cinematography

Christopher Lloyd

Great sfx

Genuinely creepy

The Bad:

Feels a bit incomplete

Inconsistent in its quality