Dead of Winter Review

Emma Thompson stars in the thriller action movie Dead of Winter released September 2025. 

Along with actors Judy Greer and Marc Menchaca this portrayal of a winter thriller is good enough to make the audience feel cold to the bones.

One of my favourite parts of this movie is that while you get to know the name of Emma Thompson’s character, Barb, you never know the names of the “evil” people.

This made the audience focus on the good characters more as it felt like we could connect with them, immediately making us side with them.

The only character that we got a lot of information on was Thompson’s.

Due to this, it feels as though she drives the movie forwards as her character transforms from a sad widower to a brave rescuer.

The lack of information that we were given about the other characters shrouded them in mystery and made the movie more thrilling as you could only pick up the small hints of information that were placed within the movie. 

Unfortunately while I really liked not knowing loads about the kidnappers some critics have said that the kidnappers motivation was not shown enough.

They said that it wasn’t convincing enough to see why the kidnappers went to such lengths to try and achieve their goal.

This is also combined with the fact that there was limited depths of other characters meaning that the audience couldn’t fully understand their motivations and that their actions didn’t mean as much.

Some critics also said that some aspects of the storyline to be underdeveloped or random.

Further taking away from the believability of the story. But do people go to the cinemas or watch a movie to stay in the realistic world? Or do people enjoy some exaggeration? I know I prefer the exaggeration. 

The atmosphere of the movie really highlighted how much of a thriller it was.

With the coldness of the snow and the isolation that Thompson faces throughout it ramped up the tenseness of the movie.

In some ways the weather reflected the coldness of the actions making them feel even more inhumane.

Personally, I liked how the weather reflected the actions as it gave the movie more depth and almost had me feeling cold. 

A film about winter coldness and humanities evil with an unexpected warmth to it.

One of my favourite parts about this movie is the flashbacks that Thompsons has which, in my opinion, juxtaposed the coldness of her present at the time.

While it gave us a glimpse into her past it also broke up the action.

I quite liked how it wasn’t just action as I find that when there is too much action that there isn’t much of a story or a chance to connect with the characters.

As an audience member I want to be able to connect with characters so as to be able to get drawn in even more.

I think that they do this well and it ties together really well at the end. 

I find that endings are critical to how I judge a movie. I

f a movie ending is too sad then I immediately don’t like the movie as much.

However, a movie where people live happily ever after can be a bit disappointing after a thriller action movie.

The ending of the movie introduced a warmness that was needed.

It balances out the rest of the movie and combines all of the different feelings making me as the audience feel at peace with it.