While West Baden and French Lick, Indiana are best known for their famous 3-point shooting hick, they are also the home of two magnificent hotels which date back to the turn of the century. Originally constructed in 1902, the West Baden Springs Hotel with its one-of-a-kind domed atrium has often been called the “eighth wonder of the world”. Sulfur springs erupt at its base, where collecting tubs create a spa-like atmosphere that only the wealthy can afford. During the 1920s and 1930s, the hotel was amongst the busiest resort locations in the United States, a place where businessmen and gangsters mingled in its “cure all” majestic springs. While the depression brought hard times on the hotel and many difficult years after, it was renovated in 2007. And that’s where Bloomington’s Michael Koryta begins So Cold the River, his story of mystery, suspense and good old-fashioned ghosts.
Following a Chicago funeral, filmmaker Eric Shaw is handed a check and a bottle of water, with one mission; travel to West Baden and uncover the story of a dying man. Funded by the wealthy daughter-in-law of secretive Chicago magnate Campbell Bradford, Shaw travels south to create a documentary film on the mysterious life of her father-in-law. That is of course, until Shaw drinks the water. As the eerie architecture of the West Baden looms over Shaw’s shoulder, he fights to keep his sanity and grip on reality, struggling to decipher between past and present and all the blurred lines in-between. As Shaw battles his demons, so do the ghosts of the past haunt Josiah, the poor, bitter and violent great-grandson of Bradford. Josiah, struggling with his station in life and his violent temper, grows weak to outside forces which impart a psychological and physiological change on him. Revenge becomes his motive. As the two men battle against their own personal demons, their own paths slowly converge on a ghastly haunting finale under tumultuous Indiana skies.