Dead of Winter Is an Ice Cold Senior Citizen Thriller

From any direction one could choose to approach it, director Brian Kirk’s Dead of Winter is something of a casting marvel. It is wild that someone–even the person who penned this script–might see the narrative before them and think to cast 66-year-old Emma Thompson, the decorated dramatic actress and Academy Award winner for Howards End and Sense and Sensibility, as a woman fighting to rescue a kidnapping victim in a frigid northern wasteland. It’s likewise wild that Thompson, a performer who has proven literally everything an actor might ever be asked to prove, would be interested in playing such a role at this point in her life, as if she’s about to make a sudden, Liam Neeson-style left turn into action heroism for the next decade. And yes, it’s wild that the same casting directors would follow up that move by pointing out the need for an equally surprising antagonist, and think: “Ah, of course, Judy Greer! The perfect foil for an action thriller.” Dead of Winter’s casting astounds on all fronts, refusing to conform to basic genre convention. And would you believe it ends up being all for the best? Kirk’s film is a surprisingly lyrical and quite gritty, intimate thriller, one that makes the best of its unorthodox choice of performers to tell a story that is equal parts tender and savage.

Thompson is playing Barb, a nebulously Midwestern, Fargo-esque senior woman (she’s got the nasal accent and disarming friendliness) who ventures up, all on her lonesome, in a sort of pilgrimage to a remote Northern mountain lake in order to do a little ice fishing … and, as we come to discover, to dispose of the ashes of her departed husband in the lake where their relationship first blossomed. The location is unclear, and much of Dead of Winter feels sort of ephemeral and undefined in this way–the German co-production was shot in Finland and Germany, but the setting certainly seems to be somewhere on the North American continent … and yet there’s a simultaneous frigid wildness to it that suggests we have ventured off the borders of any established map. That would seemingly make it the ideal location for deadly mayhem in the vein of 1981’s underrated slasher Just Before Dawn–which is not quite, but close enough, to what Barb stumbles across.

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She’s not alone at the lake, of course. There’s also a cabin nearby, occupied by a jumpy man (Marc Manchaca) the credits list only as “Camo Jacket,” soon joined by his imperious wife (Judy Greer), who the credits similarly designate as “Purple Lady” after her defining puffer jacket. Not that Barb would mind sharing the lake–that is, until she witnesses the gun-wielding man chasing down what appears to be a teenage girl (Laurel Marsden) attempting an escape. This sets the basic, elemental stakes for Dead of Winter’s thriller equation, as the salt-of-the-earth Barb pretty much immediately vows that she is going to help this young woman to freedom, or die trying. Interspersed throughout, meanwhile, are peppered flashbacks of our protagonist’s domestic and marital life at various points, illustrating aspects of the relationship she traveled here to mourn and memorialize. The question is: Will it be only her husband’s remains who are left behind, or Barb’s as well?

There’s not a ton of narrative to go around in Dead of Winter, and its stakes are built on mechanics that can be dubiously logical, like Barb being effectively trapped at the lake because she can’t get her truck to make it up a decidedly gentle but icy incline, so it’s perhaps understandable that it slow-drips information to its audience rather than dumping exposition early. It dangles obvious questions about the motivation/plans of its antagonists, for one: Why has Greer’s pushy, desperate Purply Lady abducted this young woman and brought her here, to the middle of nowhere? What do they have planned for her, and how does it relate to Greer’s own seemingly declining health? How can the frail but gumption-filled Barb overcome the pair of younger, stronger, armed adversaries?

The result has a streak of First Blood running through it, although Dead of Winter stops very well short of attempting to earnestly turn Barb/Thompson into some kind of renegade, avenging Rambo figure. In truth, it’s a much more grounded take on this scenario, anchored always by the supremely likable performance of Emma Thompson as a woman who sees an opportunity to save a life and never hesitates to take on the responsibility this would entail. Her performance is rooted in radical empathy, even for her adversaries–to the bitter end, Barb is still trying to give Greer in particular a chance to walk back her worst offenses, but as we come to eventually realize, the Purple Lady has more or less nothing left to lose. Notably that is more than one can say for her husband, and Manchaca ends up giving one of the film’s stand-out performances as an increasingly pathetic, sympathetic man who has been dragged completely past his breaking point by some toxic combination of duty, responsibility, love and intimidation.

The film wisely calculates, simultaneously, just how much genuine “action” Emma Thompson (and her stunt double) can reasonably be expected to participate in, placing a greater premium upon suspense for most of its runtime than frenetic energy or bloodshed, although it’s ultimately not shy about the latter either. Thompson does eventually work up a lather, which pays off at one point in a comical encounter with park rangers, in which the two burly men are distinctly and hilariously freaked out by the way this wounded, wide-eyed biddy comes bounding at them from the woods, babbling about kidnappers. Of course Barb, creature of habit, never loses her Midwestern propriety, describing the woman who recently winged her with a rifle to them as merely “dangerous as all heck.” In its knock-down-drag-out conclusion, meanwhile, the film increasingly reaches for a more lyrical presentation than one might expect, landing on something with satisfying symbolic catharsis.

And from a basic thriller standpoint, that committed and likeable Thompson performance, matched by Greer’s desperate intensity, is all you really need for an effective dyad. Where Dead of Winter elevates itself a bit more is in its stylistic flourishes, which including the stabbing, deep string quartet score from Oscar winner (for All Quiet on the Western Front) Volker Bertelmann, and its sensitive and often touching flashbacks to the younger Barb, as played by actress Gaia Wise. These flashes, which could read as merely a clumsy ploy for pathos, effectively deepen the character without much need for dialogue, indicative of a film that rarely finds itself needing to tell when it can simply show. It’s the best film you’ll see all year to feature Emma Thompson smashing through a cellar door and falling down a flight of stairs, and that, like Barb’s vow to safeguard her young charge, is a promise not made lightly.

Director: Brian Kirk
Writers: Nicholas Jacobson-Larson, Dalton Leeb
Stars: Emma Thompson, Judy Greer, Marc Manchaca, Laurel Marsden
Release date: Sept. 26, 2025

Jim Vorel is Paste’s Movies editor and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter or on Bluesky for more film writing.