In Dead of Winter, Emma Thompson plays a geriatric heroine when she stumbles across a kidnapped teenager being held prisoner by a sadistic Judy Greer, showing her true colors, in a remote cabin. You guess the season.
Painted in grays and muted browns, Dead of Winter looks as bleak as its story, which plays things as serious as it can. Watching the movie makes you feel cold, a testament to director Brian Kirk’s filmmaking and style. The natural lighting casts deceptive shadows when Kirk moves in close on Thompson’s weathered face; when he pulls back, positioning his star as isolated and alone, he demonstrates how much she is nothing but a mere blip against a gray-white hellscape.
Thompson is solid and near unrecognizable as protagonist Barb, though earth shattering her performance is not. Every wrinkle on her face a hardened crack, kudos to the makeup department for making you forget you’re watching Thompson on screen. On paper, though, I wish she had been written with a little more capability; while her actions and limits are realistic in many ways, her character bumbles as much as she tries to help. There’s a lack of reward and payoff in a movie where you expect some reward and payoff.
Greer makes for an easy-to-hate villain, even if she is utterly one dimensional. She’s a force to be reckoned with, a real nasty piece of work.
What freezes Dead of Winter is that it’s more or less a story we’ve seen before. It’s about as straightforward as it could be, the plot offering no real surprises. However, screenwriters Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb give some color to their few characters, the dynamics at play a little different than what you might expect. But in the end, “Thompson good, Greer bad” is the mantra.
Though fairly predictable, Kirk maintains a steady sense of suspense, or at least a suitable pace. It’s not the most riveting thing you’ll watch–for example, when two hunters show up to help Thompson, it’s pretty predictable as to what will happen to them–but it’s certainly not boring. What works in the film’s favor is that it’s dark enough that it’s possible no one will walk out of this alive
Dead of Winter is an effective thriller, even if it isn’t a groundbreaking one. It’ll make a good watch on a streaming platform some day.
Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.