Not-very-chilly thriller leaves audience cold
Characters immobilized by weak script, implausibility
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Digital Subscription
One year of digital access for only $205*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/03/2016 (3847 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The deep freeze of a Canadian winter, a remote location, untrustworthy companions, $4 million in gold coins: sounds like the promising premise for a thriller, even of the pulpy B-movie variety.
Unfortunately, despite its name, the British Columbia-shot Numb is decidedly unchilling. It squanders its possibilities on hackneyed clichés and worn-out tropes, without even trying to give them a winking sense of irony.
Will (Jamie Bamber) and his wife Dawn (Stefanie von Pfetten) are weeks away from foreclosure on their house. They have driven from Vancouver for Will to sign on as site manager at a remote northern construction site, but when they arrive, he’s told the project has fallen through.
On the way home, they pick up a pair of hitchhikers who are woefully underdressed for the chilly conditions. Cheryl (Marie Avgeropoulos) and Lee (Winnipegger Aleks Paunovic) are a brother and sister the film tries to peg as “mysterious” and therefore possibly malevolent, but they’re only mysterious because the script chooses to tell us nothing about them, other than the fact that Lee has been in jail. (Cue foreboding music… well, another film might have done that; this movie just lets the revelation sit there like a frozen dog turd.)
Through an unlikely encounter with an old man who staggers onto the highway, the four travellers come into possession of GPS co-ordinates that might mark the spot where precious coins from a long-ago heist are buried.
Of course, the two couples decide to investigate, promising to split the spoils.
Setting out in the morning after a night at a motel, these unlikely companions make their way to the road closest to the GPS co-ordinates and start off, Will and Dawn looking like models from the J. Crew winter catalogue, Lee and Cheryl looking like actors out of central casting for “mysterious hitchhikers.”
Not surprisingly, things do not go according to plan.
Numb was shot in and around Vernon, B.C., and the location is really the star of the movie, bringing it a much-needed sense of verisimilitude (though the cinematography is a bit washed out).
And to its credit, Numb does capture the desperation brought on by extreme cold and its harrowing effects (though it piles on by having know-it-all Will explain everything).
Will and Dawn have parkas, hats and mitts (though they rarely put their hoods up, possibly so we can better view the ravages of the cold on their pretty faces). Lee and Cheryl are bareheaded and gloveless with open-necked jackets, and one gets the same feeling one has watching too-cool-for-school junior high students waiting at the bus stop in -30 C weather — “You’re going to get frostbite and then you’ll learn your lesson!”
And they do. Get frostbite, that is, not learn their lesson. The film does not skimp on the gory detail; this is not a glamorous portrayal of winter survival. Skin peels, noses blacken, hands freeze into claws.
A scene where they dig for the coins is hard to watch, as much for the naked greed as for the sight of raw and reddened fingers scrabbling in the hard-packed snow.
It’s too bad Numb can’t decide if it’s a winter-survival movie or a buried-treasure movie. It’s not too bad at the former, but for latter to work, we’d need a better window into the characters’ motivations — and more importantly, we’d need to care. Dire circumstances and avarice can reveal people’s dark sides, but the lazy script ensures we don’t really know any facet of these people.
In the end, it’s the audience that’s numb, or more accurately, indifferent.
jill.wilson@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @dedaumier
Jill Wilson is the editor of the Arts & Life section. A born and bred Winnipegger, she graduated from the University of Winnipeg and worked at Stylus magazine, the Winnipeg Sun and Uptown before joining the Free Press in 2003. Read more about Jill.
Jill oversees the team that publishes news and analysis about art, entertainment and culture in Manitoba. It’s part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Movie review
Numb
Starring Jamie Bamber and Aleks Paunovic
Towne
PG
92 minutes
Two stars out of five
Other voices
Numb doesn’t work…It’s glib, flip, and cheesy as hell.
— Holly Grigg-Spall, Film4
I’d be lying if I said I felt any less numb than Hudson by the end of the movie.
— Christopher Null Filmcritic.com
Jill Wilson is the editor of the Arts & Life section. A born and bred Winnipegger, she graduated from the University of Winnipeg and worked at Stylus magazine, the Winnipeg Sun and Uptown before joining the Free Press in 2003. Read more about Jill.
Jill oversees the team that publishes news and analysis about art, entertainment and culture in Manitoba. It’s part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Advertisement Advertise With Us
History
Updated on Sunday, March 6, 2016 2:41 PM CST: Incorrect review removed.
