Naomi Watts’ true-life survival story Infinite Storm can’t handle its own truth
Joel and Ethan Coen definitely understood the impact upon an audience of telling them, as they subversively did with 1996’s Fargo, that what they were about to watch is “based on a true story.” The use of those words helped set and frame a certain expectation.
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Infinite Storm, an entirely different type of movie than the Coens’ bleakly comedic crime drama, illustrates this fact quite well. A very well-crafted but persistently disorienting survival film starring Naomi Watts, this misframed effort does itself no favors by claiming its nonfiction bona fides so prominently to its promotion and opening credits, and then flogging them so repeatedly.
Directed by Małgorzata Szumowska (Never Gonna Snow Again), the movie tells the story of Pam Bales (Watts), a New Hampshire woman who sets out on a six-hour loop hike up and around the unpredictable summit of Mt. Washington. When forecasted bad weather arrives early, bringing snow and fierce winds, she decides to turn back.
Seeing sneaker prints in the fallen snow, however, Pam reverses course and encounters a stranded, unresponsive and hypothermic man she comes to call “John” (Billy Howle). Haunted by her own personal loss, Pam dips into her well-stocked supplies and attempts to lead him down the mountain. Along the way, John, clearly driven by despair, becomes a bit more communicative but remains largely uncooperative, thrusting upon viewers questions about life-saving assistance and reasonable risk.