Centigrade: Movie Review and Summary

The thriller genre survival film from IFC midnight that touches upon claustrophobia fails to impress.

The actors who star in the film are Genesis Rodriguez and Vincent Piazza. The story is about a couple who somehow gets trapped in a frozen car with no help near them.  However, the fun is evidently missing from the plot.

The film is directed by Brendan Walsh who also co-wrote the script with Daley Nixon. Both of them are newcomers to feature filmmaking and tried to embed fact and fiction by basing a story upon real-life events. The film is about an American novelist and her husband who gets trapped inside a frozen car while they were on a book tour in Norway.

The premise is certainly fiction and the statement that it is based on “real-life events” is sort of a vague phrase to make the story more likeable. A real-life story is not always cinematic because we live in a boring world. But blending fact and fiction can sometimes be even more dangerous from a filmmaker’s point of view.

Anyway, the first scene is one of the few talking points of the film. During the first scene itself, without beating about the bush, the film introduces what it’s all about. Novelist Naomi (Genesis Rodriguez) and Matt (Vincent Piazza) are trapped in a car and are discussing how they spent the whole night in the car.

Their car is sort of covered in both snow and ice and this has made the car invisible on the road. Also, their mobile network has disappeared. So, basically, they cannot call for help.

Though the story takes place inside the car, a few shots of the outside environment make us realize how ruthless the weather is, which is accentuated by some good shots taken by the cinematographer Seamus Tierney.

As the movie goes forward, Naomi and Matt ponder over several ways which can get them out of there such as “How can we break the window?”, “How can we get our mobile network working?” “Why did it stop working in the first place?”

The film is less about suspense and more about drama. It touches upon the emotional aspects of their relationship. Both of them have a secret that they haven’t revealed to each other.

It is revealed later on in the film that Naomi is pregnant, so a different variable of a child makes their grim situation even worse. Neither the plot nor the twist is unpredictable, and that makes the film kind of boring in the middle. The film does start off really well as the opening shot makes us worry about the characters, but the story never transitioned into anything much deeper, and the intensity of each shot stayed as it is until the climax. The conclusion, however, is not that bad.

Genesis Rodrigues delivers impressive performance and she might be the only reason some people might go through with the film. The duration of the film is 98 minutes, and though most of the screen time is focused on the dilemma inside the car, there are few shots that do give us some glimpses of filmmaker Walsh’s talent.

In the end, there is nothing more to talk about. The film really is about survival, but it failed to connect with us, and it will be fair to summarize everything in four words- It failed to solidify.

Source:-  Centigrade Movie