So Cold the River

Guess I have to read the book to find out what I was watching. I truly don't know you see. It was a nice one until the last 30 minutes when it went all astray.

Well, the river might have been cold, but it was hardly enough to keep me awake.

When I sat down to watch this 2022 drama thriller titled "So Cold the River" from writer and director Paul Shoulberg, then I hadn't even heard about the movie. I liked the movie's cover, and with it being a movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to watch it.

But writer and director Paul Shoulberg just didn't really deliver a movie that fell into my liking. The narrative of the movie is slow, so insanely and very, very slow paced. And since nothing worthwhile or interesting really happens as the movie progress at snail pace, it was just more and more difficult to keep faking an interest in the storyline. And little did it help that the character gallery had all the appeal of watching wet paint drying.

Now, I wasn't familiar with the cast in the movie, and I will say that they had a good choice of leading actress with Bethany Joy Lenz, just a shame that she and the other actors and actresses had nearly nothing to work with in terms of script, storyline, characters and dialogue.

What does work for "So Cold the River" was the production value. But production value is worth nothing if the movie is lacking a properly interesting and entertaining story to tell. So it made for a dull and prolonged experience to suffer through the ordeal that is "So Cold the River".

My rating of "So Cold the River" lands on a three out of ten stars.

This film had some interesting elements, but the sum total was a bit of a mess.

First, they were clearly going for an atmospheric supernatural vibe, which made for a very dark and oppressive feel. This is definitely a movie that relied too heavily on dim lighting in order to establish the mood.

Second, while the location was gorgeous it was incongruous with the actual story. You're supposed to believe this is set in a small town where everyone knows everyone, yet everything takes place in an enormous, ultra plush, and thriving hotel. Sorry, those two concepts really did not gel as presented.

Third, this film leaned into metaphors, HARD. Symbolism can build intrigue if it is thoughtfully paired with a story, but this film feels like a lot of stuff and nonsense was thrown in exclusively to pad the runtime.

Fourth, there is no real resolution to this film. The makers wove a lot of potential threads together, but then just left them dangling at the end. Some concepts popped to merely blink out of relevance, others seems attached to the main plot, but then went nowhere, and the overarching plot points were never resolved in any meaningful way.

This film is worse than one that leaves you with unanswered questions because when it ends you don't even have fully formed questions.

Giving credit where credit is do, there are some beautiful shots in this film that offer visual interest, despite the rather drab lighting.

Alas, this film fails because it invested far too much in setting up scenes and not enough in developing a cogent story.

Ultimately watching this is like driving around in a car for a really long time, only to discover you've ended up somewhere you could have walked to faster.

As I have seen only one genuine review here (those giving it 10/10 must belong to some lobbyists that have certain personal interests in promoting it), giving it a 1, since there is no meaning, no explanation and no logic to the whole script, I felt like some enlightenement and honnesty were needed here. If you can spend an hour and a half simply looking at some nice imaging and actors that try hard enough to make it worthwhile, go for it!

If you expect to understand anything or simply have something that stays with you after this watch, just pass it, since the script is awful and it makes no sense whatsoever.

So Cold the River perhaps is Michael Koryta's version of The Shining. While the rich and layered story of the book got some tweaks and alterations for its film adaptation, the simplified iteration sadly can't give the book real justice. It's a slow burn and talkie film that mostly resembles an episode of a mediocre late-night TV mystery show.