‘The Coldness’ Unnamed Footage Festival 2024 Review: Occult Found Footage Is Downright Chilling
Mary Beth McAndrews
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While found footage films may technically be cheaper to make your typical narrative horror, many seem to forget the crucial importance of authentic, believable performances. Actors need to blur those lines between fiction and reality rather than appearing as actors performing authenticity, which can so easily destroy immersion. Director Gustav Sampaio and writer/star Paul Parducci prove such a fact in their new occult true crime film The Coldness. They execute a simple concept incredibly effectively due to a downright convincing performance from Parducci and a tight script that knows how to balance scares with emotionally devastating storytelling.
Parducci plays Nick Polito, a retired New Jersey police officer haunted by a cold case that he worked on decades ago involving a young woman who froze to death after she locked herself inside a fridge. Now, a similar death has occurred in Los Angeles and his obsession has been sparked once again to discover the truth behind this bizarre series of deaths. But the deeper he digs into each deceased person’s motivations, the more deeply he becomes engrossed in the world of chaos magic. Armed with a witch’s (Ana Zimhart) YouTube channel and a vintage ice tray, Polito descends into a manic spiral to find the truth.
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Along the way, he interviews the partner of the recently deceased, the aforementioned YouTube witch, and his ex-partner who lives in isolation after the last case was closed. Each interview reveals more and more about the complicated web Polito has found himself trapped in. While the performances in said interviews aren’t always consistent
But what matters most is Parducci’s own performance and he absolutely nails the balance between grizzled cop and broken man with nothing left. Parducci is either on camera or filming through The Coldness, so the emotional efficacy of the film lies squarely on his shoulders as both the star and the writer. Thankfully, Parducci never lets the character become a one-note stereotype, but rather a more tortured soul who’s never really stopped grieving the death of his wife. This is not a police procedural, but rather something a bit more existential as Polito intercuts interviews with his own reflections and experiments with the strange magic he’s discovered.
Next to Parducci’s performance, The Coldness is so effective due to the simplicity of the script. While the film is placed squarely into the massive world of the occult, neither Sampaio nor Parducci ever tries to overcomplicate things by overexplaining chaos magic or making it seem more spectacular than it really is. Addressing it so plainly, in fact, makes it even more chilling. These aren’t ornate rituals that require a laundry list of supplies. It’s something you can easily mess with if you stumble into the witchier side of the internet without doing your research. But by keeping this film grounded as a character study rather than a vessel for magical spectacle, Sampaio and Parducci create something really special that taps into the very human experience of desperation.
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From a technical perspective, The Coldness sets up Polito as constantly filming with two separate cameras, which gives them flexibility in camera angles and perspectives. At times it feels a bit clumsy in how cameras are placed, especially when filming a conversation. But it often affords Polito a more logical reason as to why he’s capturing so much footage and therefore has more footage to use when putting the film together (something that Polito mentions he’s doing each day after filming).
The Coldness is perhaps the biggest surprise out of the Unnamed Footage Festival. It’s low-budget indie found footage filmmaking at its best and purest form: a horror movie meets character study that never overstays its welcome or overdoes its lore. It is simply a heart-breaking and sometimes upsetting look into the life of a man who has never been able to find peace. This is a contemporary found footage film that serves as a shining example of why performances are so crucial in this subgenre. With a strong cast and an assured script, anything is possible.
Summary
Occult found footage film ‘The Coldness’ boasts a stellar central performance that cannot be missed by found footage heads.
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