Wind Chill (film)

A student ("the girl") at a Pennsylvania university uses the campus ride share board to find a ride home to Wilmington, Delaware for Christmas. She joins another student ("the guy"), who is driving home to Wilmington. Unusually, he seems to know quite a lot about her. He claims they have a class together, although she never noticed him.

They stop at an isolated gas station so the girl can use the bathroom. The girl says she needs to wait to let her nails dry, but the guy strangely offers her a piggyback ride into the store. She refuses, but he picks her up anyway and carries her into the store.

In the restroom the door becomes stuck and while she pounds on the door, she hears the guy and the clerk talking about her, but they don't let her out. After she manages to escape the bathroom, she angrily asks them why they didn't let her out. The two boys seem puzzled. Before they leave, the girl hears the guy asking the clerk for directions, although he claimed to have driven the route many times.

The guy then leaves the highway saying the route is a scenic shortcut. The girl expresses concern but consents. During conversation the girl learns that the guy has lied about living in Delaware. The girl demands to know exactly what is going on when suddenly the guy has to swerve to avoid a car racing straight toward them. His car ends up buried in a snow drift. The guy observes that the oncoming car left no tire tracks. While the guy walks back to the gas station, the girl sees a dark figure stagger past the car. She calls out, but it ignores her. The guy returns, saying the gas station is closed, but she observes that he had only been gone a very short time.

Huddling in the car, the guy admits he had been interested in her and when he saw that she was going to check a student ride board to get home to Delaware he saw a chance to get her alone for six uninterrupted hours to begin a relationship. The guy said he intended to confess later and hoped they would look back at his gesture positively.

Black-clad figures walk past the car. The girl calls to them, but they ignore her. The guy follows them up the slope into a ruined building where they disappear. He finds frozen corpses half buried in the snow inside. Meanwhile, the girl sees a lone figure on the road. When she touches it, her hand burns. It turns round to reveal it is a bloated corpse begging not to be thrown into the river.

They think help has arrived when a Pennsylvania Highway Patrol cop knocks on their window. He doesn't understand their predicament, believing they were "parking". He violently drags the girl to the back of his old fashioned patrol car, but the guy hits the cop with a tire iron. They both jerk awake, finding that the guy has the tire iron frozen to his frostbitten hands. She realizes the guy was injured in the car crash, but had been hiding it.

The cop keeps reappearing, always heralded by Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" on the car's radio. The girl dreams of the many people the cop has killed, until he was discovered by the priests.

The girl has the idea to use an old telephone in the car to call for help from the junction box on a nearby telephone pole. She tells the guy to honk the horn when the song appears on the radio. She climbs the telephone pole, connects the telephone and reaches 911, but is not sure if they can hear her. Returning to the car, she finds that the guy has died.

The girl sees headlights approaching, thinking that it is the cop, but it turns out to be a snow-plow driver responding to her call. The snow-plow driver puts the guy's body on the back of the truck and they leave. While driving he tells her that in the early 1950s a corrupt cop murdered people on this stretch of road and their bodies were never found. In 1953 he ran a young couple off the road, but lost control and also died in the ravine. Frequently, around this time of year, more people die on this road. In 1961, the priests were found frozen to death in their beds.

The plowman sees headlights and believes more help has arrived. Instead, the ghostly cop runs them off the road. Despite the girl's pleas, the driver gets out to help the person in the other car. The girl follows him and the pair see the two burning cars from 1953 down the ravine. They see the priests walk down to the trapped cop, but instead of helping him they pull the microphone from his police radio, leaving him to burn to death. His burned body crawls out and tears up the plowman, who then freezes solid.

She runs back to the truck and tries to start it, but the ghostly cop reappears. The ghost of the guy appears and hits the cop with a tire iron.

She jerks awake and realizes she's back in the car, with the guy's body next to her. She screams in despair but the guy's ghost appears and leads her through the ruined priests' home, to the gas station, where he disappears.

Coroners load the guy's body into a van as the girl is wrapped in a blanket by a paramedic.

Note: No character in the film is ever named.

• Emily Blunt as Girl
• Ashton Holmes as Guy
• Martin Donovan as Highway Patrolman
• Ned Bellamy as Snowplow Driver
• Chelan Simmons as Blonde Girl

Wind Chill being filmed on location at the University of British Columbia near Vancouver.

The college scenes in the film were shot at the University of British Columbia near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Outdoor scenes of the movie were shot near Peachland, British Columbia, in February and March 2006.

Rotten Tomatoes gave Wind Chill an approval rating of 46% based on reviews from 24 critics. The site's consensus states: "Wind Chill is a ghost story with a clunky and unpolished script that fails to keep viewers in suspense."[5] Metacritic rates it at 52% based on reviews from 7 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[6]

Justing Change of Variety called it an "intermittently effective thriller" and "a rickety vehicle for its two perfectly cast leads".[7] Andy Webster of The New York Times called it "A moody, spooky tale, rendered with laudable economy."[8] TV Guide gave the film two stars out of five.[9] BBC also gave two stars out of five.[10]

• Holiday horror
• List of films set around Christmas

• Wind Chill at IMDb
• Wind Chill at Box Office Mojo