Dripping with paranoia and passion, Cold Skin is some hot cinema that transcends the genre.

The world is on the brink of war when a young man (David Oakes) takes over the responsibility of surveying the weather of a secluded island in the Antarctic. Hoping for isolation, he instead finds the crazed and weathered Gruner (Ray Stevenson).  Gruner quickly reveals that this island has more to it than meets the eye with a terrible scourge lying just below the surface of the ice.  Quickly this young man has to make an impossible choice, does he side with a mysterious legion of creatures that he doesn’t fully understand, or with an obvious madman.

Cold Skin is the kind of horror that forces us to look inwards and is easily the strongest film that Gens has ever done.  He takes command of his surroundings and crafts a strong visual narrative as this desolate island that these characters exist in becomes a key player in this story unto itself.

It’s about the horror of isolation, and while Ray Stevenson can play crazy pretty much with the best of them, the crux of the film comes with the performance of David Oakes.  He manages to run the gamut from terrified to fascinating as the entire movie plays like a fable for the new world that is growing so many miles away from this desolate island.  Both men easily carry the movie as this isn’t your standard creature feature by any means, as it’s a film that requires depth and nuance just to understand it.

Cold Skin works because it’s actually not trying to be a horror movie and settles into those ideas that we find incredibly relatable, like two strangers learning to live and deal with each other for the very first time.