SFIFF: Cold Prey

We must admit we were quite surprised by a good many things at the screening. First off, the photo we saw on most of the SFIFF brochures and advertising for this movie had 5 people looking like they are about do some serious backcountry snowboarding. Thus we were expecting half of the audience to be stoned snowboarders thinking this was Warren Miller’s latest. However, as we entered the beer garden, we didn’t see any low riding boarding pants or sun-burned foreheads so we figured most everyone knew what they were getting into.

Next, before the movie started, there they held a small horror genre trivia quiz. There was a question about the hotel room number in the Shining, the rank of some guy in another movie, and the name of one of the actors in Alien. We didn’t know his name and don’t remember Alien very well but from the facts presented in the question, our guess was that he was the first one killed in that movie. Ok, NOW on to our movie.

What we really liked about the movie, or rather what sets it apart from other slasher flicks, is the attention paid to character development within the script. The director mentioned in his brief talk before the movie how they really tried to make the characters seem like real people and not just stand-ins waiting to be killed. Due to the stronger storyline, we did start to feel for some of the characters as the movie progressed, adding a whole new dimension to the plot.

If there was a weak point to the movie, it was the lack of any development of the slasher himself. Nevertheless, we were pretty pleased with a good scary movie experience as we strolled out of the Kabuki at 2 am.

Cold Prey plays again at SFIFF at the Kabuki on Tuesday, May 8 at 1:30 p.m.