Cold Sweat - DVD

Content: Roman (Facundo Espinosa) is sure that his ex Jackie (Camila Velasco) has left him for an internet acquaintance. Together with his good friend Ali (Marina Glezer) he wants to find out if Jackie really has a new lover. To do this, Ali has also made contact with the strange man on the Internet and arranged to meet him for dinner at his apartment. But instead of an attractive young man, Ali finds two sadistic pensioners in the house who lure women into their dwelling via the Internet in order to then abuse them for cruel experiments. While Roman waits outside the house, Ali experiences a true nightmare in which nitroglycerine plays a particularly explosive role. Only when Roman sneaks into the house and is able to free Ali, the tide seems to turn. But the old men still have many a bloody surprise in store for their guests...

The horror thriller Cold Sweat is based on a rather nice initial idea. Two former members of the paramilitary, right-wing extremist group AAA (Alianza Anticomunista Argentinia), who have managed to get a whole lot of explosives and weapons aside and now use them to live out the sadistic tendencies they had as children, holds plenty of potential for tense and bloody moments that horror fans could take great pleasure in. Some moments of which director Adrían García Bogliano has also executed very effectively. Whenever he also spices it all up with some extremely dark humor, his film works really well. For example, when Ali wants to get help from the neighbours of the mad pensioners and ends up with, of all people, a bunch who don't want to call the police for very obvious reasons. And also the slowest car chase in film history announced on the DVD cover has a very high entertainment potential.

Unfortunately, the good ideas that can be seen here in the beginning are not elaborated carefully enough to be really convincing in the end. There's too much that's either completely illogical or simply left unexplained, making the story itself feel a bit half-baked and watered down. Also, the main characters and their conflicts with each other are just too one-dimensionally drawn for the viewer to develop any real interest in them or their fate. Had Bogliano delivered a bit more substance here, Cold Sweat could have been a real smash hit. Because the dark setting, the initial idea of the story and the two crazy old men offer exactly the right potential for this.

So, however, the film has become only a fairly entertaining genre entry, which has a little splatter, some suspense and a few really good scenes to offer. If you don't expect more and don't question the whole thing logically any further, this DVD premiere can definitely be recommended. Worth seeing!

Picture + Sound: The image of the DVD is dominated by green and brown tones, which underline the atmosphere of the film well. Image sharpness is at a decent level, with the only visible weaknesses being in the detail in the many dark scenes. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is quite powerful, but rarely has any real surround moments to offer. Primarily, the front-mixed dialogue and music dominate the action.

Extras: As a bonus, there is unfortunately only the teaser, trailer and TV spots for the film.

Conclusion: Cold Sweat is a pretty decent horror thriller, which has some very good and original ideas to offer, but which are sometimes lost in arguably large logic holes. If you don't question the whole thing too much, just want to see some splatter, attractive actors and probably the slowest car chase in movie history, you can safely grab this one. Worth seeing

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp