if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Melissa (Leet) discovers her boyfriend Daric (Keeslar) cheated on her so she joins a play in a small Tennessee town to get away. On the way there she has a brutal car accident and is found on the side of the road by Clive (Searcy). Clive is a mentally challenged man who lives in a shack by himself in the woods. Seeing Melissa as a gift from God for his extreme loneliness, Clive takes her up to the shack and begins a relationship with her, mostly in his mind. Melissa's sister Cathy (Carter) takes a guilt ridden Daric with her to the town to discover what happened to her sister. Director Tony Elwood working from a script by himself and Mark Kimray steers Cold Storage in several different directions. It's hard at first to tell if Melissa is seriously injured from the crash of out right dead. Soon you realize she is dead and Clive is moving around a corpse which is creepy in itself. Clive is so delusional and his loneliness so fierce, he is just thrilled to have another body with him. This is when this movie is at its best. Elwood makes Clive sympathetic even though his outward appearance his gross and you actually feel his loneliness. As mentioned, Elwood takes the story down different paths including dark and intentional humor which doesn't always work. There is a lecherous neighbor named Luther Spoole (Brett Gentile) that is stupid and unwanted. The movie never really picks up momentum. It just runs along until the end confrontation with Clive and the sister and boyfriend. There isn't much horror or suspense in the film until the very end when Cathy is captured briefly. Credit must be given to Tony Elwood for resisting the urge to turn this into low grade torture porn. Nick Searcy is strong and believable in the lead role of Clive. Unfortunately 'Cold Storage' doesn't move the meter in the horror department and may have worked better as a twisted drama.

Above all, I will insist on the fact that this film is surprising, very unusual, among all the horror and survival movies we can watch since so many years. It could look like an ordinary slasher, taking place in the lost Appalachian mountains or anywhere else in the American wilderness, with the usual red necks hanging around. Clichés among clichés. DELIVERANCE was the very beginning of all this. Yes, I was very pleased to find at last a feature that could bring some fresh air to this kind of cinéma. Here, no real red necks, but ordinary people from the country side, who have weird habits - see the sheriff eating his egg yolks with a straw !!- and give us an interesting study of how they live. The best thing I loved in this film was the lonely man's character. All along the film, he is presented as a poor guy. And he is. In many other movies, characters like him are kidnappers, bad guys who torture and kill lost urban tourists. In this flick, you feel sympathy for him. After all, he did not kill the girl deceased in her car accident.The only villain on the film is killed by our lead.Our lead who is finally considered by the other characters like the REAL bad guy. I like this kind of way to build a story. At the beginning of the film, you may think that this man is the evil, and then you see you're wrong, and after one hour and a half, you finally get back, but not in a proper way. You may feel ashes or bitterness in your mouth. Because the moral is not entirely respected.And I am very fond of this. That changes.

This movie is less about being a horror splatter-fest, and more along the lines of "How to become a zombie bride." (In fact, the one person viewers KNOW is "really quite sincerely dead" by the end is the victim of the opening, Hedwig-induced car crash.) Otherwise, writer\director Tony Elwood provides a level of horror genre restraint almost on par with thriller classics from yesteryear, say Hitchcock's PSYCHO. Nick Searcy, as necromancing groom Clive Mercer, shows that he's ready to step into the Anthony Perkins role (hotelier Norman Bates) when the next PSYCHO remake is made. Particularly intriguing are Clive's dental hygiene habits. Brett Gentile nearly matches Searcy in his portrayal of Clive's nemesis, the even coarser Luther Spoole. While Jeffrey Pillars' caricature of a Southern sheriff is strictly by the book of Hollywood stereotypes, and Matt Keeslar joins Joelle Carter in being fairly bland as the clueless outsiders on the search for a missing loved one in the back country, bit players such as John W. Love, Jr. (Jerome), Rebecca Koon (Jewell), and Gina Stewart (Rhonda) shine in their parts with a light that often eludes even the leads in low-budget, little-seen horror flicks such as COLD STORAGE. Perhaps the producers' most questionable decision is to use Matthew Stewart's lament "Take Me" as the closing credits song, with lyrics such as "I'm prepared to prostitute my name; all I ask is 15 minutes' fame." Most of the people connected to this movie seemed to have a very opposite attitude; this is NOT Paris Hilton's HOUSE OF WAX remake (though it probably cost 100 times less).

Low-budget direct-to-DVD indie horror movie Cold Storage is unexpectedly rewarding. Independently made in 2005 for around 1 million, it won DVD distribution in 2010 with a May release. Watch it soon because it deserves appreciation. (The director made 2 previous micro-budget features that had some exposure on cable, which I haven't looked up, and this looks like the height of his movie making career so far.) -Minor spoilers ahead- Cold Storage begins when a pretty blonde lady, Melissa, leaves her philandering but contrite husband. Her wish to start over draws her towards a nearby rural town, where a summer theater acting gig awaits.Melissa's journey takes her down a dark wet country road. She's thinking about her new start, when something flies out of the night and shatters the windshield, and everything goes spinning. Seconds later, her car is a wreck and she lies paralyzed and helpless on the lonely road, a heartbeat from death.By chance, a driver in a creepy old car happens on the gruesome scene. Instead of leaping to help, he ominously backs in with unknown intentions. He's a mentally challenged hillbilly, who tenderly takes Melissa's barely breathing body to the passenger seat, and tows her car to hide it where nobody should ever find it.From this point, the first half of the movie becomes the story of Clive Mercer, the child-minded loner who has always hidden in his desolate shack on the outskirts of town. It drags a bit with only one active character, before it branches out when Melissa's husband and sister resolve differences to team up and find her. The movie seems headed for boringville at first, but Clive's scenes really help it cook later on, because they win genuine pity for his loneliness (a minor feat of cool writing). He becomes a sympathetic monster while he gives a horrible kind of love to his special secret friend. Despite his disgusting role, he's not the nastiest character in the story when it unfolds with more than it seemed to hold at first. It's also cool that the character who might slay the monster is hardly better: it's the town's cloddishly dumb, mustachioed and bejowled sheriff. He can barely be bothered to search for a missing lady, because he's dumb and doesn't care for city slickers. In one notable scene, he slurps egg yolks through a soda straw in a way that's grosser than the worst gore in this movie.The movie's best asset is the way it relies so little on action, cheap scares, or effects (not that it's afraid to go for a few hilarious gross-outs), and branches out through it's characters in a humorously off-kilter way. Even incidental characters with just a few lines help reveal a small town full of stories, such as the faded glamor queen who runs a thrift shop where Clive dares to buy something odd for his special secret friend. The movie draws from well known genre sources and combines them with it's own personality. It doesn't sit in one genre (horror, suspense, black comedy), it does things it's own way (even when it's clunky), and it mines entertainment from taboo. You can tell it has personality by the way the titular situation is only a very brief part of the plot (in other words, maybe too unique to easily market.) Unlike crappier horror movies, it's a book you can't judge by it's cover, and it's probably 73 times better than other much more financially successful ones.I'm not saying it's a flawless classic, but it makes me hope the creators make more and better (some of the actors have already had success with recognizable TV parts). It's worth the attention of people who appreciate underrated, creatively creepy movies. Netflix has it, and you should give it a try.