Cold Comfort Car: Walsh Gets Wound Up in Perfunctory Trauma Reenactment

Survival thrillers which reenact harrowing experiences documented by those who lived through unthinkable trauma initially seem impervious to criticism. They are accounts, after all, ‘based on true events,’ and regardless of whether they’re sensationalized, exaggerated or outright fabricated for dramatic effect, there’s usually the remaining kernel of integrity which mainlines necessary universality.

For his directorial debut, Brendan Walsh and first-time screenwriter Daley Nixon tackle a 2002 account of an American couple traveling in Norway who pull over during a snowstorm to awaken hours later trapped in their frozen SUV, where they remain buried for a month. Unfortunately, despite committed performance by the two leads, it’s a mash of clichés and platitudes on guilt, blame, and miscommunication in an exercise which is indeed a frustrating viewing experience, albeit for all the wrong reasons.

Married couple Naomi (Genesis Rodriguez) and Matt (Vincent Piazza) find themselves in an impossible situation when they wake up frozen in their vehicle, which is buried under several feet of snow. They’re in Norway and were on the way between locations for Naomi’s book tour. When a blizzard hit on their drive, they pulled over and unwisely fell asleep. Unable to exit the frozen vehicle, which won’t start, they also seem to be without cell phone service, which leads to the couple falling into a pattern of lashing out at one another. But days pass, then weeks, and the eight month pregnant Naomi finds she must contend with the possibility of giving birth in their vehicular igloo since neither of them will risk digging their way out into the snowbank on top of them and potentially freezing to death.

The trouble with Centigrade is we never really get a clear sense of characterization on Matt and Naomi, which may in part be due to the film being based on an amalgamation of similar survival stories. As such, they seem to be ciphers of garden variety marital dysfunction. The film also drops us directly into the detrimental scenario, and as days drag on for the couple, so do the minutes for the audience as their bickering leads to disbelief about neither of them making any drastic moves to escape their impossible predicament.

Some time spent with the couple outside the car may have allowed for some characterization as well as lessening some of the car sickness experienced in this static, frozen hellscape. Of the two, Genesis Rodriguez has the slight edge, but she’s conveniently hobbled by an eight month pregnancy—although no one bothers to explain, in their constant blame game, why a woman about to give birth would bother with a book tour for a publication it seems no one’s very excited about.

Her insistence on relaying on an escapist story she composes about a woman in Paris adds to the film’s acute sense of naivete (sans one mention of urinating in a towel, where they continue to place their human waste within the SUV seems a detail worth mentioning considering the weeks spent in the vehicle). If Centigrade belongs to the subgenre which would include Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours (2010) or J.C. Chandor’s All is Lost (2013), it’s only a superficial comparison.

★½/☆☆☆☆☆