help identifying movie title?

[jenoline]

My family got into a movie discussion the other day, and DH brought up this movie that he & I saw several years ago. We both keep remembering snippets of the plot, but neither of us can remember a title, or who was in it. I was hoping someone here could help.

Here's what we remember:
It's a missing person/murder mystery. It takes place in winter, in some small town. Every year the townspeople push an old junker car onto the lake, and then the whole town places bets on when the ice will thaw and the car will sink. Someone is investigating a string of missing people (hubby thinks it was kids/teens and that most people think they have run away). Finally turns out that they had been murdered and put into the car(s) that are in the lake.

Any clues?
Thanks!

[ollyoxenfree]

Spoiler alert - American Gods by Neil Gaiman (see below). It's a book, not a movie, so I don't think it's what you are looking for.















This is a plot development in a Neil Gaiman book - I'm pretty sure it's American Gods. As far as I know, there is no film adaptation (yet). The plot twist/spoiler is that it's an annual ritual human sacrifice that keeps the small town a safe, happy, economically thriving place to live.

It's possible that Gaiman lifted it from a movie - it's also possible that someone has "borrowed" it from Gaiman and put it in a different film. I'm afraid I can't help any further.

[jenoline]

Well, maybe it is...DH actually said at one point, "Maybe it wasn't in a movie - maybe it was in American Gods" LOL I insisted that it wasn't, that I clearly remembered it in a movie. Thanks!

[meemee]

wow you have some v. visual memories!!! so do you think in pictures? images? you must have really got into the book for you to remember it so vividly - scenes from it.

[ollyoxenfree]

The funny thing is that I have clear images of this part of the book, as if I had seen a movie of it. When I read your post, I could visualize the car parked on the frozen lake, ringed by dark forest, and the eventual break up of the ice....It took me a little while before I could place the scene as something from a book, not a movie. I think these scenes are vividly written by Gaiman.

[meemee]

ok guys now i HAVE to go read that book.

[ollyoxenfree]

Originally Posted by meemee

ok guys now i HAVE to go read that book.

Just a little caution - this part of the book doesn't appear for quite a while, and it's really a side plot to the whole novel. It's a really terrific novel though, so I highly recommend it.

[jenoline]

Originally Posted by meemee

wow you have some v. visual memories!!! so do you think in pictures? images? you must have really got into the book for you to remember it so vividly - scenes from it.

I don't know...I generally remember images better than what I read, so I'm actually surprised that I recalled this so vividly. Perhaps I've just seen too many movies, lol, and that image just seemed to fit what I thought a movie scene would be like. We'd been talking about Fargo when DH brought it up, so maybe I was visualizing scenes from that movie as I remembered American Gods.

Originally Posted by ollyoxenfree

The funny thing is that I have clear images of this part of the book, as if I had seen a movie of it. When I read your post, I could visualize the car parked on the frozen lake, ringed by dark forest, and the eventual break up of the ice....It took me a little while before I could place the scene as something from a book, not a movie. I think these scenes are vividly written by Gaiman.

Gaiman is a great author. I love his books. I may re-read this one.

[blizzard_babe]

I have that book somewhere. I should re-read it!