Dead of Winter (2025) * *

Directed by:  Brian Kirk

Starring:  Emma Thompson, Judy Greer, Marc Menchaca, Laurel Marsden, Gaia Wise

Dead of Winter has the elements in place for a crackling thriller which somehow loses steam quickly.  What's left is a slog which runs only 98 minutes but feels interminable.  It takes place in Northern Minnesota, and with the snowy, ominous backdrop and a folksy female lead, it's hard not to compare the film to Fargo.  However, this is where the similarities end.  Fargo was a masterwork.  Dead of Winter is destined to be forgotten.

We meet Barb (Thompson) who is traveling to a Northern Minnesota lake to spread the ashes of her recently deceased husband.  The movie shows us flashbacks of them in their younger days.  Why this is, I don't know.  All these scenes accomplish is take us away from the present day in which Barb stumbles across a remote cabin where a married couple are holding a teenage girl hostage.  Dead of Winter hints at why the girl was kidnapped and maddeningly hides the plot from us until the end when the couple's aims are revealed.  The antagonist is a woman listed in the cast as "Purple Jacket" (Greer), who is terminally ill and suffers nosebleeds while wielding a shotgun and bossing her hapless husband (Menchaca) around.  

Barb, who speaks in the same accent as Marge Gunderson, while using her resourcefulness and ingenuity to help the girl out of her predicament.  It's certainly new to see Emma Thompson in an action role, and who knows?  Maybe she'll become the next Liam Neeson in this stage of her distinguished career.  But while Thompson is game, the movie lets her down.  By the way, Barb's late husband's name is Carl and the flashbacks remind me of Up, so we have a movie that combines elements of Fargo and Up, and succeeds at being nowhere near as good as either of those.