The Dead Of Winter

Emma Thompson plays a lonely woman heading for a chilly destination in this wintery thriller from Brian Kirk. It’s a role that might have been written for Frances McDormand, rough edged but warm hearted, in a film that starts out feeling conventionally cynical but goes on to find humanity in all its characters.

Barb, a widow in her mid-sixties, is taking a trip to a lake up in Northern Minnesota. She prepares quietly in her neat Lundquist home, stops off at the Bait & Tackle for fuel, and makes her way along a series of long, straight roads lined by snow. The radio says that conditions are set to worsen, but although she sighs at the news, she’s not deterred. When she meets the man at the cabin (Marc Menchaca), she will tell him that she’s going fishing, but there’s clearly more to it than that.

She encounters the man because, faced with a fork in the road and an unreliable map, she has chosen to take the road less travelled. It’s the wrong direction for all sorts of reasons, but nothing bad will happen to her on that encounter, despite her unwary curiosity about a bloodstain in the snow. “Deer,” says the man, and it seems reasonable. Less reasonable is what happens the second time she sees him, at the lake, and it’s this that drives the rest of the film.

Barb is a resourceful character. She’s older than the others in the film, and uses her accrued knowledge and well honed patience to her advantage. One has a feeling that, were she facing a single opponent, the film would be over very quickly. But when another character, played by Judy Greer, comes into the picture, she finds herself with a formidable adversary. Not only is this woman pretty handy with a rifle, but she absolutely cannot afford to lose – to her, it really doesn’t matter who dies as long as she gets what she needs. Barb, on the other hand, values life to a degree that makes her seem more like a real person than one would expect in this kind of work. It’s a vulnerability, but it’s also what makes the effort meaningful.

Interwoven with the present day action is a series of flashbacks which tell the story of Barb’s relationship with her husband, Karl, contextualising some of her skills but primarily explaining her mindset. This is sweet but a little overdone in places. Likewise, her ditziness is sometimes overplayed and doesn’t gel with the rest. Thompson is a good enough actor not to need much soliloquy. Indeed, it’s in her quieter moments that she gives us the most, though it is satisfying to see her get a couple of fight scenes, with older women too often being written off as fragile and helpless.

The central narrative twist here is well signposted and there are not many surprises, but it’s a serviceable thriller with a good bit more soul than most. There are a fair few nerve-racking moments and the icy locations are well used. You could certainly find a worse way to spend a Saturday night.

Reviewed on: 26 Sep 2025