Whenever I tell people The Blair Witch Project is one of my favorite horror movies, most of the reactions I get involve a pair of rolling eyes. Having recently watched Wind Chill, I know how these people feel now. Just as the idea of three college kids bickering in the woods isn't everyone's cup of tea, neither is this film's premise of two college kids bickering in the middle of a snowstorm mine. For me, Wind Chill reaches a dead end on the road to horror.

It's two days before Christmas, and a nameless college student (Emily Blunt, the British actress of The Devil Wears Prada fame) needs a ride back to her home in Delaware. Luckily, thanks to the campus ride-share board, she hooks up with a young guy (Ashton Holmes) who's willing to give her a lift. It's not long before she realizes their meeting was no coincidence, but in no time, these two have more to worry about than a shy kid's misguided way of striking a girl's fancy.

A detour down a scenic highway on a dark and snowy night ends with the pair driving their car into the ditch. Faster than you can say "Stephen King," ghostly goings-on begin to take place, with pale apparitions wandering in and out of the woods, not to mention a demonic patrolman (Martin Donovan) making his presence known. As the darkness grows and the temperature plummets, the students must resort to every method of survival they can think of in order to see the light of day. 

Wind Chill boasts a premise which definitely presents a most frightening proposition, that of being not only stranded on a snowy and deserted backroad but also  alone in the midst of various supernatural occurrences. But just as such other low-budget horror flicks as Penny Dreadful and Dead End were similarly sunk, Wind Chill fails to live up to its promise because of a nearly fatal case of repetition.

Instead of ramping up the tension with each new scene, making the film increasingly claustrophobic and absorbing, director Gregory Jacobs (who previously helmed the Nine Queens remake, Criminal) seems to pull the same stunt over and over again. The two main characters bicker, try to leave, run back to the car, rinse and repeat. The chain of events doesn't vary much from that basic description, and aside from one or two spooky scenes, Jacobs doesn't come close to achieving a consistent aura of eeriness. It would be nice if  viewers actually cared about the fate of the two protagonists -- but these individuals aren't even given names, and one is a complete nutjob.

Blunt is easily the best thing about Wind Chill. Given a thinly fleshed-out character with a troubled background to explain her tough exterior, she takes the role and goes for it, creating a sympathetic heroine and pulling it off with a flawless American accent to boot. It's too bad the screenwriters didn't bless her character with a sense of logic, for anyone with the slightest amount of brains would flee from Holmes's character like he had the plague. I'm not spoiling anything by revealing his character cooked up the ride-share idea just to get closer to Blunt, but since her character is supposed to be extremely skeptical and sharp as a tack, it's hard to swallow that she wouldn't head for the hills the moment she picked up on his ulterior motives.

Holmes comes across as even more of a doofus as the movie rolls along. Donovan's performance as a coolly psychotic spirit isn't bad, but the character itself is shoehorned in out of nowhere and saddled with a back story that ends up being too little and too late to strike any real fear into the hearts of moviegoers.

For an even more successful take on a story similar to Wind Chill, rent the original Blair Witch or even 2004's underrated chiller Open Water. Both features play almost perfectly upon the terror of being stuck in an isolated situation while evoking sympathy for their  characters. Wind Chill, however, ends up making the viewer wonder if being stuck in the snow would be a better alternative to sitting through this movie.

MY RATING: * 1/2 (out of ****)

(Released by TriStar Pictures and rated "R" for violence and disturbing images.)