OPINION | REVIEW: Snow days

A movie "inspired by real events" that sounds a bit like a round of "Would You Rather": As in, would you rather go overseas on an ill-formed book tour, driving down twisty, isolated roads in Norway in the dead of winter, while, apparently also eight months pregnant, and get trapped in a blizzard and snowed-in on the side of the road with your partner for more than three weeks, giving birth in the process; or thrown into a bubbling cauldron of lava weasels?

Yet, apparently, novelist Naomi (Genesis Rodriguez) and husband Matt (Vincent Piazza) did just that -- the first one, not the lava weasels -- or some facsimile thereof back in 2002. The film opens after that fateful night on the road between small villages, when, in the face of an ice storm and blizzard-like conditions, they decided to pull over and sleep rather than keep going. When they wake the next morning, they find their car has been encased in snow, and frozen shut like a tomb. Initially, they try to plan their imprisonment carefully, rationing their food and water, and breaking into the emergency kit provided by the car rental company.

This works well enough, at first, though Naomi, pregnant enough that few airlines would have let her fly, continues to complain and rag on her husband for the mistake of his pulling over. But as the days add up -- we get vague counts from day 1 to 5 to 14, and so on -- it becomes increasingly clear that Matt's plan of "just staying put" has serious flaws (buried as they are, even when plows do come down the road, they can't spot the embedded car).

Eventually, of course, the baby arrives, adding "continual crying" to the list of shared grievances for the couple, but they remain trapped, and still they sit there and wait hopelessly until things go from bleak to worse.

Brendan Walsh, making his feature directing debut (he co-wrote the script with Daley Nixon), has given himself the sort of challenge young writers always find tempting: Limiting the world and the possibilities for their characters, leaving their sparkling prose and/or dialogue alone to carry the weight of the piece. In this, there are mixed returns. Given the maddeningly constricting circumstances, there's only so much that can happen in a plotted sense (having the baby, certainly high on the list), so there are the inevitable scenes where secrets are revealed, and shame -- given and generated. Staged more like a play, by necessity -- initially, the camera shots (from front, back, and diagonal sides, with a lower, hand-held to show detail) are so fixed, you start to get itchy, before Walsh finally relents and expands the repertoire -- we are stuck inside with the freezing couple. Early on, the exterior shots of the mountain peaks and the swirling snow along the valleys, give us as little idea where they are in context of that great white morass as they have.

To his credit, however, Walsh doesn't turn this into melodramatis excruciate for long. As it is, the couple have bigger burial problems to contend with than just the stuffed-down secrets between them. Still, it is nothing short of maddening to watch them wait endlessly rather than actually take active agency toward their predicament (even if, as the film's epilogue explains, their course of studied inaction was indeed a positive factor in the outcome). It might be more than forgivable, given their circumstances, but for the audience to recognize so many possible alternate plans of action (why, in God's name, for example, should you bloody your frostbitten hands in an attempt to hack out of the snow, rather than use your heavy boots to kick the ice free?) that the couple steadfastly refuse to take makes for a viewing ordeal, albeit not as brutal an experience as watching what Naomi eventually forces herself to do with her ejected placenta (yes, we most definitely go there).

Perhaps not the best choice for people who already feel impossibly cooped up by the covid experience, although, it might actually make you feel a little less dour toward your small, two-bedroom apartment, filled with decent, nonhuman things to eat in the fridge.

Matt (Vincent Piazza) and his novelist wife Naomi (Genesis Rodriguez) make some curious decisions in the thriller “Centigrade,” which is allegedly based on a true story.