MovieChat Forums > Wind Chill (2007) Discussion > How do people NOT understand this movie?...

How do people NOT understand this movie? * Spoiler alert *

posted 17 years ago by phila-3
54 replies | jump to latest

I've been reading the different postings regarding this film and I am amazed at how people these days want everything spoon-fed for them. If you actually paid attention to the film as you watched it, and listened to the dialogue, you would have found that everything is explained very simply. And yet some people compalined that it was "too complicated" of a story.

It was a simple ghost story, with a sub-story about a shy, awkward guy who was attracted to the rather difficult girl. Within the film, all the characterizations are explained, and what happened and why. The guy was not a stalker, and the girl was more stuck in a "need to be cool" mindframe than anything else - with a lesson to be learned by the end of the film. He didn't know how to approach her, and figured he would offer a ride. In the film he even mentions how he would have "done it differently" if given the chance. I shouldn't need to explain anything about the ghosts because they are all explained in the movie. Somehow though, this fact is missed by quite a few posters on here.

And yes, after she realizes what's she's lost in him, he guides her back to civilization.

I think this is a fantastic movie that is filled with just enough suspense, eerie settings, and a very basic story (or two) that harkens back to the classic days of ghost story telling. If you didn't "get it," then I recommend you go back and watch it again.

[–] Dudoid 17 years ago

And if everything is so simple, then can you just answer the main question everybody is asking: when exactly did the guy die? (Or, did he die at all?)

[–] Sk8rwannabe0889 17 years ago

This is just me, but I think the Guy died when the Girl was trying to connect to 911 at the end of the movie. I mean, if it was before then, why did he deal with the frost bite from hitting the cop, and why was he peeing blood? Also, when the Girl finds him dead, you can see a figure walk in the opposite direction of the African-American smuggler the cop killed back in the day (the one the Girl touched) through the side window. I think that was a clue that he had finally passed and was now going to live in his reoccurring life thing.

The Guy!Ghost was actually acting rather normal--not physically hurt or anything, too. So that's why I think it shows the transition from the Guy and the Guy!Ghost.

But this is all just my opinion.

[–] twilightfun 17 years ago

Sk8rwannabe0889, when that figure passed in the opposite direction (to the left side), like you I thought that's exactly to indicate the guy was finally gone.

[–] chartroy 17 years ago

It's pretty clear to me that the boy died as she tried to connect to the landline box. My first view of this film had me quite confused, but still I enjoyed it. After two more viewings, I think the theory of the "recurring life" is the main plot point. It's definitely a "thinking" movie: one where we are allowed to come to our own conclusions about alot of the goings on. I really enjoyed this movie and agree that Ashton and Emily did fine acting work. The only part that seemed out of place or 'gratuitous' was the ghost who's feet were tangled in rope or wire, burned the girls hand when she touched it, and the eel/and or/snake that came from it's mouth when it turned. That scene was confusing to me and what was the ghost mumbling???

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[–] perigrine-monique 14 years ago

The bound ghost was muttering something like 'no officer, don't put me in the river' (I had the subtitles on). Given that the 'officer' ghost was from 1953 and the use of the N word, I had the idea there was a bit of racial stuff happpening. The slithery thing could have been either an eel or water snake? which fits with the river thing, and that one was only seen on the bridge..I think.

[–] GrlCatBrat 17 years ago

Yes, The Guy died when The Girl was calling 911. If you don't remember, while "Silent Night" was playing..."Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" cut in. I think that was when The Guy died.

Obviously The Guy died from internal injuries. Come one...he was peeing and coughing up blood. I don't know how he sustained those injuries exactly..but he did.

[–] gothor 17 years ago

Dude, he was in a car crash. That's how.

!

[–] BronzeKeilani26 14 years ago

COMMON DAYUM SENSE! How can anyone w/ any intelligence not know when dude died *geesh*

My IMDb credentials:
http://www.imdb.com/user/ur7441441/comments

[–] TequilaMockingbird5150 14 years ago

I missed that. Where in the movie did it say that he was a smuggler?

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. Samuel Beckett

[–] LittleMissSunshine1993 17 years ago

I think he died when she went to make the call to 911 via the telephone pole access box. Someone here mentioned that he freezed to death. That's one thing I'm not sure about though (the rest of the movie I'm pretty clear on) ... I'm not sure if he died as a result of his injuries from the accident or if he freezed to death or possibly a combination of both.

[–] Blues32 16 years ago

He died when she went to use the phone.

"...Raggle Fraggle."

[–] audrey_o 16 years ago

He died when she went to hook up the phone.

I believe he sustained internal injuries in the crash..The car was old..it didn't have airbags..he could have injured himself on the steering wheel.

As he was losing so much blood..via his urine and coughing it up, his cardiac output would have been slow.. coupled with the freezing temperatures, he didn't have enough circulation blood in his system to sustain a constant temperature and would therefor die by the cold a lot quicker than someone with no injuries.

Just my theory

[–] hjkljdfio 16 years ago

It was really quite simple. He froze to death while she was on the telephone pole.

[–] hjkljdfio 16 years ago

It was really quite simple. He froze to death while she was on the telephone pole.

[–] EibhlinnSavage 14 years ago

Pretty obvious. The Guy sustained internal injuries during the crash and died of internal hemorrhaging while she was calling 911. That's not even a complex question, come on. Required no effort to understand that.
The only thing that is a bit complex is the time loop thing the ghosts are blocked on and even that is explained by the Guy as the eternal reoccurrence theory.

Eibhlinn Savage

[insert movie quote]

[–] brimleg 17 years ago

The point in fact isn't getting the simplistic plot, it is caring about the plot, the characters or the movie itself.
The feature was boring to tedium. It was not scary, dramatic, horrifying, or entertaining.
Both characters as portrayed, called for the audience to hope for their early butchering to end the exchange between them. I'm happy you understood and enjoyed it.
As a ghost story, the line was spoon fed by the driver of the snow plow. The director took it so far as to finally see the cops demise as a denial of help by the town (the priest climbing up the hill as "bad cop" shouts obscenities.)
Hardly a "Hitchcock" technique.
It was not the blood fest of other tales of ghostly revisitation, but the snap freezing of the snow plow guy was not much of a scare or thrill.
Not complicated at all, simply a waste of celluloid. Is it possible this was a collegiate cinematic assignment film that mistakenly made it to the mainstream?
I give it a solid C- (Nice try, give her another go...)

[–] Ben_Kidney 17 years ago

I guess no one here has heard of Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence then?? That is the central theme here..

[–] bjossa10 17 years ago

he died of internal injuries.

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[–] leslie_5329 17 years ago

I'm pretty sure neither of them were psychology majors. He was majoring in eastern religion and she was majoring in philosophy, I think.

[–] TheGodfather1215 17 years ago

I kind of figured that the ghosts were just her imagination playing tricks, because after almost every time she saw a ghost they cut quickly to her back in the car as if it never happened. To me it was just a simple story of two people getting stuck in the middle of nowhere in a car, and eventually he dies and she finds her way out.

[–] Sk8rwannabe0889 17 years ago

She was majoring in engineering, which would provide reason why she understood about airwaves, being able to connect to 911, etc.

Plus, she said, "Have you ever seen so many eastern religion types in your life?" and "I only took [philosophy] because I heard it was an easy A."

[–] ColoradoLady 16 years ago

Nope - he seemed to make an assumption that she WAS a philosophy major because they were in the same Philosophy 101 class. In that conversation, she said that she was majoring in engineering (the type of engineering - e.g. civil, mechanical, aerospace, etc., was not clear because they walked on each other's lines and I couldn't make out the specialty). She stated that she took the Philosophy 101 class to get her humanities credits, and said that she heard that the class was an "easy 'A,'" which was why she bothered to select it.

“No generalization is worth a damn, including this one." Oliver Wendell Holmes

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[–] AlisonLovesYou 14 years ago

i think we get that he died while she was calling 911 god everyone stop typing that it was obvious

Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars?

[–] rainybklynight 15 years ago

Well I still feel like it was more than that. Because as she's trying to hook up the telephone, you hear "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" come on the radio, and they mentioned before that whenever it did, the cop showed up. And the cop, as we see later, freezes all the other victims to death after his own death (e.g. priests, family in car). The guy was just too weakened at that point to honk the horn when the cop showed up. He was nodding off, and likely would have died within a few hours, but I still think it was the cop because of the radio.

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[–] always_keep_fighting 17 years ago

He was majoring in Eastern religion, and she was majoring in Engineering.
chartroy, the guy who had the eel come out of his mouth was saying, "Please don't put me in the water...I don't want to go in the water" or something to that effect. Apparently he was one of the black liquor smugglers that the evil sherrif had killed and dumped into a lake. That's how the eel got in his mouth. That part creeped me out.

Life's not about surviving the storm. It's about learning to dance in the rain.

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[–] egakli 17 years ago

this was the worst film i have ever seen!!!! utter *beep*

[–] Sk8rwannabe0889 17 years ago

Guess you've never seen Rest Stop then...

[–] tomaselliot 17 years ago

or Midnight Meat Train... even bradley cooper's pecs couldn't save that show

[–] divyangworah-1 16 years ago

i liked this film very much. wish they would make a sequel with both the main actors returning. i know the guy died. but they could find a way.(twin brother, hadn't actually died etc)

[–] Kissman 16 years ago

I liked this film very much as well -- at least for what it was. It's a low budget horror movie that doesn' come across as one. The acting is solid and the story, while simple, is well crafted. It genuinely creeped me out several times.

This is the kind of movie you stumble across on cable, give it a chance and end up pleasantly surprised.

[–] nion-5 16 years ago

we are all thrilled that so many of you are getting and liking our film -

[–] Sk8rwannabe0889 16 years ago

Thanks for making a movie that actually causes you to think. There are some hecklers that come here, but I think they were expecting a different movie. I saw it because one of my favorite actresses was apart of it, and I trusted that she wouldn't be apart of a typical thriller. I wasn't let down. I actually watched the film again after it finished because I wanted to try to understand as much as I could on my own before coming here for theories. It's a fun movie to watch over and over again after you've made your own assumptions and have read others' as well.

[–] torvoris 16 years ago

reading the replies in here is why i decided long ago to NEVER trust the reviews of the posters on this site. i enjoyed this movie greatly. it came on early this morning so i decided to watch it from the description. i thought it was interesting thruout the film and it does cause you to think. i also liked that neither had actual names in the movie hahaha. great film and it may come as a surprise but i had never heard of it before this morning.

[–] ColoradoLady 16 years ago

Point of clarificaton - you're Mr. Wallace, who portrayed the priest who removed the cop's radio receiver? If so, please know that I enjoyed the movie, and your work in it - such that I've seen it about a dozen times. It is more cerebral than indicated by the simplistic opinions of others who have not considered the movie's nuances (whether subtle or downright expressly presented) and/or considered alternative theories that the movie presents.

Congratulations on your work...

“No generalization is worth a damn, including this one." Oliver Wendell Holmes

[–] hawk-58 16 years ago

nion-5, I happened upon this film on cable today. Being a huge Emily Blunt fan, I knew it would be worthwhile and I wasn't disappointed. I found it very suspenseful, even though as others have mentioned it was slow moving in actual time. The switching back and forth between the two people in the vehicle and the "hallucinations" was very effective. There were some red herrings (although I personally believe the locked restroom door at the beginning of the film foreshadowed the supernatural events to come), and I didn't always guess right, but that made it all the more interesting.

I knew from the beginning that this was not a big-budget major studio effort, but I thought it was very well done all around. The two lead characters were believable (except I wondered all the way to the end why the male character didn't have any warm clothing in the car, especially as he said he had been kicked out of his apartment and presumably would have had his whole wardrobe with him), and I appreciated the fact that the "ghost" characters were effectively creepy without burying everything in the usual buckets of blood. Sometimes less is more, and I think everyone associated with this film can be proud of it.

There are so many bad movies in theaters it is a pleasure to happen upon an indie movie of this caliber on cable (one that isn't about serial killers and/or drug addicts, that is). I think I will tape it when it is repeated this evening so I can watch it again and see if I missed anything the first time around.

[–] dawatcher 16 years ago

'How do people NOT understand this movie?'

I guess everyone has different views. I saw this as an urban legend type story about 2 flawed characters with a moral to it. Something for some guys to watch with their girlfriends.
A bit archaic though, in this age of child-men.

[–] aristadrive84 16 years ago

I agree she is stuck in a "need to be cool" mindframe (similar to the female lead who played opposite Ashton in Normal Adolescent Behavior), but also I think her character is bitter partly because of the fallout from her parent's divorce. By contrast, Ashton's character seems to come from a more solid family background (evidenced from his remarks about the family's Christmas traditions). By the end of the film she has learned to be more trusting but by then of course it is too late.

[–] all_right_fine 16 years ago

you answered the part of the question that NOBODY was wondering. Things people are wondering are things like, why did time revert every time the Guy was about to hit the ghost cop, and why were a lot of the dead bodies going to that busted up old cabin place, and why exactly was the priest there? It seemed like he was there to stop the ghost cop from surviving, except that it was just a re-enactment of his death, so he was already dead and able to kill people anyway.

So topic creator, next time you try to sound smart by "answering" people's questions, answer their actual questions, not that simple part of the movie that everyone realized from the first time around.