‘Wind Chill’ generates old-school goose bumps

Next to the 21st century remakes of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” “Black Christmas” and “The Hitcher,” “Wind Chill” must have appeared hoity-toity to the film’s distributor. Produced by Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney and directed with old-fashioned disquiet by Gregory Jacobs, minimally scored by Clint Mansell and featuring tormented performances by rising stars Emily Blunt and Ashton Holmes, the film does not aspire to the freakitude of the “Saw” franchise, but to the character-driven horror films that no one except perhaps M. Night Shyamalan and Greg McLean is interested in making anymore. Because of this, “Wind Chill” would appear to have no place in our current cine-marketplace, hence the perfunctory release in a handful of theaters on its way to DVD.

Inexplicably angry at the beginning of her hitched ride to Delaware with Holmes, whom she suspects of elaborately orchestrating their excursion, Blunt begins to warm up to her traveling companion after they crash off a highway’s beaten path. No FM radio waves drift into this snowy valley, but a Christmas carol repeatedly comes through, signaling visions of horrors past as figures in black robes trudge through the snow and a policeman played by Martin Donovan arrives to torment them. Their fear of the unknown may or may not kill them and perpetuates the kind of intimacy another film would have played for cheap thrills. Here, the characters’ realistically idle chatter about philosophy, romance and the edicts of common courtesy is put into practice as Holmes’ permafrosted car becomes the locus of their will to survive.

“Wind Chill” doesn’t advance the mechanics of the horror genre, but it gives audiences fed up with the Michael Bay School of Horror something of a breather. Jacobs is a drab visualist, but the way he allows the film to coast on repetition is almost poetic. Consider the film a throwback to the ethos of “Phantasm” and the original “Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” when the empty space to the right or left of a character’s face didn’t necessarily signify a pending booyah-scare. This isn’t merely a horror film about things going bump in the night, but a study of the effects of desolation on our sense of personal consciousness.

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“Wind Chill.” MPAA rating: R for some violence and disturbing images. Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes. In selected theaters.