On Screen: “Numb”

Numb

While channel-surfing the other night, we stumbled across “Numb,” an inane Canadian thriller with a title that — appropriately — rhymes with ‘dumb.’

Subtitled — “Greed knows no limits” — all four of its leading characters are thoroughly dislikable and so selfish that you really don’t care who survives the ‘lost in the wilderness’ ordeal.

It begins one snowy night as a married couple — Will (Jamie Bamber) and Dawn (Stefanie von Pfetten) — are facing financial ruin. Driving on a deserted highway from their home in Vancouver, they pick up two desperate hitchhikers.

Secretive siblings Lee (Aleka Paunovic) and Cheryl (Marie Avgeropoulos) are a study in contrasts. For a recently released ex-con, he’s deceptively sensitive and friendly, while she’s evasive and openly hostile.

Suddenly, an old man staggers onto the black-iced highway directly in front of their car. He’s barely conscious and obviously seriously ill so Will, who is driving, rushes him to the nearest hospital, only to discover that he’s DOA (dead on arrival).

But he had wads of cash and a single gold coin in his pocket, along with a scribbled map with geographical coordinates. Apparently, he was the sole survivor of a bank robbery that netted $4 million in gold coins.

After much discussion, Will, Dawn, Lee and Cheryl are convinced that he was trying to retrieve the loot from the coordinates written on the note, so they set off to find the buried treasure which, apparently, is only a few miles away.

Problem is: they’re reckless, inadequately dressed, and ill-prepared for a long hike through the frozen, rugged terrain with its many forbidding obstacles. Frostbite is inevitable, along with hypothermia, as they make one stupid decision after another.

Written by Andre Harden, directed by Jason R. Goode and filmed by cinematographer Jan Kiesser in Northern British Columbia, it was featured at the Closing Gala of the 2015 Whistler Film Festival before its theatrical release as part of the Canadian Indie Film Series.