Is the climate our enemy? Sometimes it seems so; sometimes it’s represented as such, too, as if the floods, hurricanes, heatwaves and cold snaps we’ve seen in recent years are all doing it on purpose. Perhaps, then, it was inevitable that horror would take the fear of a new relationship with the environment and run with it, as it has with Snow Falls (2023). It’s a film which takes some elements of the Dyatlov Pass incident and makes it all-American, placing a group of wholesome twentysomethings in a pretty cabin and then putting them through the wringer. As such, it’s a film which offers, and let’s just get these out of the way: a flurry of ideas, not all of which stick, but it deserves some credit for trying out those ideas in the first place.
There’s doom and gloom on the radio as our twentysomethings Eden, Jace, Kit, Em and River – who sound like collectibles – head through a wintry landscape on a fateful New Year’s Eve. We obviously know it’s a fateful New Year’s Eve, or we wouldn’t be here discussing it. The town of Snow Falls is their destination, though they are headed to a remote cabin belonging to River’s family. The group wastes no time establishing there’s no phone signal – though this isn’t always the case, or else our characters couldn’t take some plot-expedient video calls or boast about social media – before settling in. One of the plot-relevant Zoom calls warns them that a snowstorm is heading their way; could they, too, end up on a cautionary radio bulletin?
The New Year’s celebrations pass without a hitch, but the promised snow does begin to fall…and fall…and fall. The group hunkers down, fully expecting to be stranded, but a power outage comes next which takes out the heating as well as the lighting. Their predicament gets worse: soon the roads are completely impassable, the house is getting colder and only a – actually, a reasonable number of people know they’re there, but they are still going to be cut off for a couple of days. Now, there’s a bit of a problem here. Firstly, it’s a little hard to believe that they’re all imminently freezing to death, given the prominence of a lovely, fireside glow; it also looks suspiciously as though the breath vapour has been done in CGI. Can’t we genuinely freeze actors now? Whatever are we coming to? It’s hard not to think of Meiko Kaji in Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41, filming the opening punishment scene and getting genuinely sprayed with ice-cold water so no steam appeared on the film, endangering the illusion for audiences. You don’t get that these days, evidently, or at least you don’t get it here. It’s also a little hard to believe in how quickly our twentysomethings come apart at the seams, given the whole ordeal is, what: a few days? Can they feasibly be this cold and hungry already? But, to move things along, we really need to believe in this: we need to believe that the group is growing paranoid and unstable – because here’s where it gets interesting, or shifts gears, at least.
In their fractious state, the group begins to wonder if their predicament might not be caused by the snow itself. They ponder: is the snow doing something? Is it malign somehow, a presence – or a virus, which is changing their behaviour?
This is a decent addition to the plot, this idea of sentient weather conditions, actively seeking to do harm to humans. Previous successful environmental horrors have simply let the conditions themselves do the talking, even if they have edged into fantastical in places; Crawl (2019), for instance, pushes it, but it still plays out admirably as a film about a flooded basement where things go extra wrong. We don’t always need unusual extremes of weather, either: Adam Green’s Frozen (2010) simply shows us how badly wrong things can go if you’re left out in the cold and no one knows about it, though, again, it all goes extra wrong. So Snow Falls attempts to blend the perils of extreme cold, isolation and privation with something else, something potentially supernatural. I mentioned the Dyatlov Pass incident because that, too, has always seemed to do the same, with many conspiracy theories (and a few films) over the years discussing what happened – was it disorientation and hypothermia, or more?
Unfortunately, it feels as though the film doesn’t fully commit to either of the two outcomes it suggests – that things are going to get really menacing, or get silly-zany. The role of the snowman out front (who even built it?) is ambiguous. Monster, hallucination, ironic symbol? Overall, the film really needed to decide on a way to go extra wrong. It doesn’t do this, and nor (given this is film is rated R) descend into out-and-out gore, violence, or anything of that sort. Ultimately, it offers a lot of possibilities, but never really realises these, opting for uncertainty which often feels like a bit of a cop out.
That being said, and taken as a whole, it brings an engaging idea to the table, with some scenes of peril which work well and a reasonable pace, neither outstaying its welcome nor overrunning the central idea. By the way, Snow Falls has to be seen in the winter; to view it in any other season would dissipate any relatability it has. But it seems that director Colton Tran already has another four horror or suspense titles in pre- or post-production, so it looks like there’ll be a few more to go around very soon…
Snow Falls (2023) will be released by Lionsgate on January 17th 2023. Get it while it’s cold.