Dead of Winter (8/10)

by Tony Medley

97 minutes.

R

Sexagenarian Barb (Emma Thompson) travels to an isolated lake in northern Minnesota (filmed in Finland and Germany) to bury her husband’s ashes there. She gets stranded but discovers a young girl (Laurel Marsden) kidnapped by a couple (Judy Greer and Marc Menchaca) for nefarious reasons that would be a spoiler to reveal.

Barb goes through hell to try to rescue her, even though she is stranded in the brutal cold wilderness with nothing to help her. It is about as remote as it gets, and she has no cell phone service. She is also completely unarmed as she proceeds to try to help the captured girl. Thompson occasionally borrows Frances McDormand’s Oscar®-winning accent from Fargo (1996) and does it well. As usual, she gives a sterling performance (when has she not?).

This is a welcome movie for older women showing how a 60-year-old widow can take on some bad people all by herself. There are plotholes, but they are often present in movies like this, so they really don’t detract. Barb seems to know many survival techniques and how to do many things that a normal person like her would probably not know how to do, but there would be no movie if she couldn’t do them.

Directed by Brian Kirk, written by Nicolas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb, the locations and cinematography (Christopher Ross) are chilling, and that’s in a good sense. Among the many positives of this film is the frozen environment in which it takes place. The acting by Menchaca as he is freezing cold makes one feel his pain. I’d give him an Oscar® nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Filled with high tension throughout, I found it exhausting but captivating and believable.