The Chiling is a 1980;s horror film about cryogenics it starts with a long bunch of text to read all about the science of it and then a shoddy looking title and then you see a bunch of cryogenic pods and you get to see the names on a few of them, C Chaplin, W Disney, Roosevelt. The top billed acting talent for this film is Linda Blair. Now I guess its important to say that I never saw this one back in my video rental days nor in fact have I ever seen it at all before writing this review, I have no real attachment to it or reason to be biased for or against it. Now I guess I need to say the good old SPOILERS the film might be from like 1989 so I don't think people are going to scream at me. I wont give away the ending but I will talk about the plot, how things move along and how I feel about it all.
With one of the early scenes being a punch of protesters waving placards and shouting ''Stop Cryogenics'' I wonder if this is some kind of morality protest piece. It being followed by scenes of a guy talking to a creepy looking Doctor with sinister music playing makes this film feel highly unsuitable. Hey it might throw me a curve ball but it feels like its automatically setting this all up to make me instantly think the company is sinister and this is all going to go bad, but hey I had a good idea this would be the case when I found it under a search list of 90's horror on YouTube didn't I. 'We then get to meet some guys who are going to go ''pull a job'' basically they drive somewhere and demand all the money from someone and then shoot them clearly they are subtle masterminds and guess what this is not even the job they go on from this to a bank and one thing leads to another and then you have a big fire fight and well all of them are shot and it looks like they all die on the scene apart from one who is rushed to a hospital. Then this all links turns out the robber is called Joe and he is the son of the guy we saw talking to the creepy Doctor earlier, the guy had gotten his wife frozen earlier and now he calls the Doctor to arrange to get his son frozen and here I was thinking this was all a bunch of unrelated trash thrown together. OK I have now worked out who Linda Blair is shes one of the people who works for the cryogenic company.
So Linda's character and the guy whose son is going to get frozen go for coffee together and we get to learn that Linda's husband/partner is an alcoholic. So far this movie has made me feel like I could use a drink. So far horror wise we have seen internal organs and pretty much given the idea that the Doctor is selling them, so it looks like he is pumping people full of a green substance which he says will help stop them from decaying, pulling out there internal organs and then freezing them. I think that basically he is just a Conman and thinks what the heck by the time technology progresses at any real speed I will be long gone, no one will know that all these bodies are basically sitting there pickling away with all there insides gone. So far 27 minutes of film has gone by and I am feeling some major drag, doesn't help that the film just name dropped Freddy Kruger. I am always saying this about songs that drop other musicians names such as the one where the guy says he cant dance like Michael Jackson but don't name drop the name of someone or something which is better than your product. You wouldn't see me going well look I might be no Memeulous or AVGN but I can chat shit with the best of them, it just leads to comparison.
Not only have we mentioned Freddy, in the film it is now Halloween night oh and there is a potentially dangerous storm, do you want to tick any more boxes right now, maybe a trip out to a camp ground or some drugged up teenagers could be introduced to the film and start having pre-martial sex and smoking hash. The storm has knocked the power out at the cryogenic facility oh and the back up is not working either.The two security guards push all the cryogenic chambers out into the rain because hey its colder out there than it is in doors. It is soon after this 39 minutes into the film to be precise that we get our first look at the Zombies, yep in case you couldn't guess its a zombie movie, the frozen dead wake up stumbling from there cryogenic chambers wrapped in metal baking foil. We have our first death in the film at around the 43 minute point we see a serious monster movie cliche and that's the Zombies walking through some kind of fog/mist, surly the film could have cut the last 43 minutes down a little trimmed some of the fat so to speak. Though it is a little after this part we get to see a Zombie throw one of the security guards through a window and it is a pretty darn epic stunt for the time, we then see a couple of Zombies go to his fallen form and a minute or two later we see he has been how shall we put it nibbled a bit. You don't see them eating him, you don't really see any blood or anything. Follow this up with lots of flashing, lots dark and the zombies doing what I would call gently killing people. I would say the zombies make up doesnt look that great but its so dark you cant really tell which I suppose is a plus point if your not confident on the monsters in your film then hide them in the shadows or keep there screen time as low as possible. In honesty there is something slightly reptilian looking about them.
OK well I will end it here in order to not spoil it for anyone keen to try it because they haven't seen it. In my opinion the film is to weighed down by stuff that doesn't really matter, so many things are built up for the payoff to be next to nothing. The whole organ selling thing was in my opinion a waste of time, there was no need to spend ages building the business up as evil, heck I could have written a few lines that made the boss seem like a nonce without laying it on so thick to do so little with it. The film wasn't a total turd I would score it a 4 out of 10 but I think it needs the fat seriously trimmed from it and either add in some gore to appeal to real horror fans or tame it down even more and make it a pg13 my kids first horror movie and more of an adventure oh spooky thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment