or, “The Five Stages of Grieving Wasted Time”:
A spoiler-free mini movie review.
1 out of 5
“Dead of Winter” (or DOW) is the antithesis to ‘Golden Topping Land:’ a movie you are actively conscious of while watching; an unremarkable composition that will pass from your brain as quickly as consumed, like cinematic Benefiber.
1. DENIAL
Actress Emma Thompson has had a robust & trustworthy career, and here, she plays the unlikely heroine of a kidnapping thriller. An Executive Producer credit ensured her creative autonomy, lest we forget she also won a screenwriting Oscar.
2. ANGER
With control comes accountability – ergo, no one else is responsible for today’s wretched protagonist, except for Thompson.
[cont’d]
With few lines beyond a late monologue, her Barb is supposed to be built like a brick shithouse from decades of ice fishing, but rather is a ringer for “Fargo’s” Marge Gunderson, sporting a plaintive limp & gibberish three-pronged accent that her younger self in flashbacks doesn’t have.
3. BARGAINING
Emma, it’s great you’re still open to try something different, but don’t do it again. Absolutely never.
For April’s “The Amateur,” I wrote that composer Volker Bertelmann brought “the Chicago Wednesday vibes.” Indeed, Bertelmann returns here with another overbearing, dissociative soundtrack, but the comparison now applies to the whole: if you substitute Barb for Severide or one of the Halstead brothers, you’d have enough plot to sustain 45 minutes of television.
4. DEPRESSION
Wielding, then, what should have been a modest doubling of length and a focus on naturalism, TV & DOW director Brian Kirk instead leaves viewers with mostly filler & no killer: events are framed in one afternoon, but all the hiking says otherwise; a distracting & extended wound dressing scene drops by without warning; we watch as Barb loads each bullet into an empty clip;
a repentant villain is cruelly afflicted with hypothermia for more than half their appearance; and a long sequence involving duct tape will have you arguing about its purpose instead of, you know, being invested in the climax.
5. ACCEPTANCE
There is a clear method behind Kirk and his scriptwriters’ narrative & artistic choices: to ground the viewer in the isolated atmosphere of DOW’s snow-covered setting; and highlight an individual with a generational strength in taking her punches, both environmentally & sentimentally.
But method means nothing without execution, and Dead of Winter is a tired “Desperate Hours” retread: lackadaisically paced & fearsomely stupid, with a lead ignorant to her own dramaturgical sabotage.
//wd 10.4.2025
Poster sourced from impawards.com. Publicity photograph property of Tacklebox Productions.
theory of a daskeman 