Cold Heaven — Cold Heaven(Blu Ray)
London-born director Nicolas Roeg started off his career in a very impressive and distinctive form. Going from the trippy to violent gangster meets burned-out rockstar drama of Performance (1970). Onto the visually arresting & arty coming-of-age drama Outback (1971), through to moody and chilling horror of Don’t Look Now (1973). Sadly, like many great filmmakers, his talent did waver ‘n’ wane - and I guess (been kind) you’d say 1991’s Cold Heaven is one such dip. The film tells of an adulterous woman whose doctor husband dies and miraculously comes back to life- it’s a decidedly haphazard & TV movie/straight-to-video-like mix of soapy romantic drama, Christian heavy faith supernatural fantasy, with very watered-down traces of thriller/ supernatural horror. Here from Ronin Flix, is a bare-bones region A locked release of the film.
As well as Roeg leading up the film, we have a fairly impressive acting talent involved taking in the likes of Theresa Russell, Mark Harmon, and James Russo. So, on paper Cold Heaven, should be at least good to passable…. unfortunately, it flies under both, been possible one of the blandest, preachy, and trying films I’ve watched in some time- really taking a lot of focus & patience to get through.
The film centres around Marie (Russell) and her doctor husband Alex Davenport (Mark Harmon). The pair are in Mexico on holiday. We find out sooner enough Marie is cheating with fellow doctor Daniel Corvin (James Russo). One day while out on a boat at sea, Alex decides to take a dip- and just as he’s swimming along another boat runs into his head, with red a plenty surrounding him. He is rushed to hospital, though fairly soon declared dead. Marie tries to come to terms with the loss, and ponders if she should carry on with her affair.
She’s called back to the hospital where her husband's body is- to be informed he’s gone missing. She decides to change the hotel she’s staying on a whim. One thing leads to another, and she finds out her husband is back from the dead, staying in the hotel too.
As the film unfolds, she visits a cliffside monastery, encounters a butterfly-covered female saint, asks for help from a priest/ then turns him down. This is all set in a hell of a lot of badly acted soapy drama & very preachy Christian faith fantasy. There are attempts to inject both thriller tension and chilling-back from-the-dead horror, but none of this ever hits. So instead, you have to sit through an extremely bland often pastel-coloured 90’s soapy drama, which is people vapid and one-dimensional characters, who you care nothing for. The whole thing is finished off with a very fay Spanish guitar and dully drifting synth key score- which makes the whole thing even more trying. The film runs at just over the one hour and fort minute mark- and boy was it a trail to get through.
It is of course wonderful that we are getting so many lesser-known films reissued these days. And when I saw Nicolas Roeg was behind Cold Heaven, and it sold itself as ‘a haunting, wild, and chilling psychological thriller’, I was most hopeful. Sadly, this should have remained in obscurity- as it’s a prime and stuffed turkey, with really nothing of Roeg’s talent or original flare surviving.