COLD MEAT - Mark Reviews Movies

Cold Meat, Level 33 Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 22, 2024

Cold Meat combines three different kinds of thrillers into one. For the most part, the mixture is pretty convincing.

The first one is made apparent from the story's start, as a man named David (Allen Leech) hits the road from a motel, with the radio announcing that sub-zero temperatures are here and a blizzard is approaching this part of Colorado. A prologue teases a couple of things, too, although the more important bit to the story is the sight of a car buried in snow along an unseeable road next to an expanse of forest. No, David's road trip doesn't seem fated for much success.

The second thriller mode is trickier to discuss, to be sure, because the screenplay by Sébastien Drouin, James Kermack, and Andrew Desmond is one of those clever exercises in misdirection. It shows us exactly what we think we should know about the plot and these characters, only to reveal several times that our assumptions might be accurate, albeit for the completely incorrect reason, or so wholly wrong that it's a genuine shock what the actual truth of the situation is.

Obviously, David is a good guy, prepared for whatever troubles might come his way. After all, he proudly wears and displays his wedding ring, despite being away from his wife and alone and maybe even flirted with a bit by a pretty server at a roadside diner. We'll get to her later, of course, but as for more about David, he keeps a car seat for an infant in the back of his compact car. He's responsible and ready, and before we even notice those little signs of the man's life, our initial introduction to David has him taking a snow cover off his vehicle. The guy knows what's coming, even in terms of the weather, and he's not going to be caught off guard.

It may not seem like much, but because the script is so barebones and increasingly confined, the little details such as these matter as much as, if not more than, the bigger ones. There's no better way to tell us who a character is than through actions and habits, and by the time David arrives at the first of some significant challenges to his trip, the screenwriters have ensured that we have a solid grasp of at least some of the core components of this man.

The plot itself is far more malleable, although that's one of the benefits of and sources of genuine surprise in this film. What's it about in general terms? Well, it's about David, who he is, how he handles and doesn't control an assortment of scenarios, and what all of that says about him. It's also about Ana (Nina Bergman), the waitress whom David encounters on a stop at a coffee shop off one of the highway's exits.

He stops in, looking for some coffee and a rare steak, but the cook is heading home to beat the weather. It's not as if Ana's going to go out of her way for a stranger. She wants out of here, too—not only because of the blizzard, but also on account of a string of ignored calls from her ex-husband Vincent (Yan Tual). A glimpse of a text message he sends gives us a clear sense of his attitude, so when his pick-up truck pulls into the diner's parking lot, Ana's terrified reaction is only confirming what we already suspect.

There's a pair of standoffs as a result. One is between the exes, and the other has David stepping in before Vincent becomes more physical. What we know of the traveler is once again asserted. David is calm, composed, and entirely rational in trying to convince the angry ex-husband to leave him and Ana alone, go home, sober up, and make a major change to his life if he's ever to expect to get any sort of custody of the couple's daughter.

It's here, perhaps, that any kind of summary of the resulting plot should remain as vague as possible. Some of this is predictable, since Vincent does promise with more than a hint of a threat that he'll be seeing David again. Drouin, though, uses that apparent predictability to unexpected, sinister ends.

When David crashes his car into a snow drift trying to outrun and outmaneuver Vincent, we're pretty confident in our belief that there are two threats here. The first is nature, of course, because the blizzard has arrived, the cold is so freezing that even a few seconds in it starts to turn David's skin dry and discolored, and the only source of heat is inside that car, which thankfully has a full tank of gas. Fuel and battery power need to be conserved, though, in such inhospitable temperatures, when it's impossible to tell when or if someone will find a car that has traveled down a side road.

The other threat is human. Someone here has a secret, so the battle becomes both against the elements and one of wits in a confined space, trapped in the middle of nowhere and with no immediate hope of rescue. Those little details of character pay off in an unanticipated way, leading down a path of darkest and cruelest potential, and that attention to detail is just as strong in the way the participants have to use available resources, knowledge and/or assumptions about each other, and pure determination to try to survive.

There is that third thriller component, but it's best left unspoken entirely, if only because it's the weakest part of what the filmmakers are doing here. Without it, Cold Meat would likely be a stronger film, but even with it, Drouin has made a twisty, claustrophobic thriller that's as cunning in its minimalist plotting as it is psychologically unsettling.

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