From Omeleto.
A man is hunted.
In the dead of winter, deep in remote Maine, a forest ranger named Reed Decker is called to yet another grim discovery: a body recovered from the frozen wilderness, marked by strange, unidentifiable bite wounds. As more victims surface, whispers of an unknown predator spread through the small town.
Decker delves deeper into the mystery, encountering strange sights, sounds and personalities in the course of the investigation. But he soon realizes the terrifying truth: he is no longer the hunter, but the hunted.
Directed and written by Werner Traut, this atmospheric short horror-drama generates a persistent, chilling feeling of eeriness, not just through its subject matter and genre but through the way it captures a specific sense of time and place. The remote reaches of Maine in winter have a striking, distinctive rawness, captured in equally stark cinematography. And here, the visuals enfold its character and stories in an almost impenetrable sense of otherworldliness and dread as a small town’s inhabitants are picked off by a powerful but unseen force.
The narrative structure sticks to the classical outlines of a crime investigation, as Reed follows clues and probes at mysteries, prompted by the discovery of a body covered in bites. As Reed, actor Jeffrey Alan Solomon has a crusty doggedness that feels authentic, as a sensible, skeptical New Englander puzzled by a strange murder. But as the narrative unfolds, it also fleshes out the town itself, constructing a sense of isolation that fits both the setting and the temperament of its inhabitants.
Cut off from the larger rhythms of the world, the silences feel more portentous in these environs and the darkness more all-encompassing, lending a growing spookiness to the proceedings. It also builds up another more mysterious presence, one with its own agenda. As Reed traipses among the skeletal trees in the wilderness, he puts himself on a collision course with this presence, one that feels as ancient and unknowable as the nature around him.
COLD TRAIL is aptly named, both for the surprising course of Reed’s investigations and for the palpable chilliness it evokes through its strong visuals and atmosphere. The nature of the predator stalking the town may not be hugely surprising, but it’s nevertheless a pleasure to be transported to a corner of the world where such an ancient, malevolence presence feels like it could be a reality — where the forest’s silences and shadows feel untouched by modernity and human presence is put into perspective as small and helpless against the primal elements of nature it comes up against.
COLD TRAIL. Courtesy of Werner Traut at https://wernertrautfilm.com.
