3 months ago
18
Dead of Winter
★★★½
(MA) 97 minutes
A grey-faced Emma Thompson is menaced by a couple of deranged characters with a hunting rifle in this aptly named thriller, but it’s highly likely that hypothermia will claim her before they can.
Emma Thompson in Dead of Winter.Credit:
The Minnesota setting – a snowbound purgatory in the middle of nowhere – is the star of the show, although it does have formidable competition from Thompson, whose Minnesota accent matches Frances McDormand’s efforts in Fargo. But it’s hard to kick the notion that you’re watching a small group of people trapped in a vast refrigerator, an impression reinforced by the news that the shoot took place in Finland, where the temperature dropped to minus 29 degrees.
Thompson’s Barb has been in the area for most of her life, running a fishing shack with her beloved husband, Carl. Now Carl is dead after a long, debilitating illness and he’s left behind one request – that his ashes be scattered on Lake Hilda, a favourite spot of his and Barb’s when they were young and falling in love.
Barb sets out, predictably running into a blizzard on the way, and she gets lost. When the outlines of a cabin materialise from the enveloping whiteness, she asks its suspicious-looking resident (Marc Menchaca) for directions and just as predictably, he turns out to be one of the villains. He’s not nearly as dangerous, however, as his wife (Judy Greer), who has talked him into kidnapping a young woman (Laurel Marsden).
The reason for this crime is not remotely plausible, but it matters less than the logistics of the plot and the role played by the weather in ensuring that Barb is the only one who can save the girl’s life.
She can’t call the police because her mobile phone has no signal, and she can’t drive to the nearest town because her truck has become bogged in the snow.
Everything depends on her guts and her ingenuity, which means that suspense lies in the detail as events are played out step by step in a manner of thrillers gone by. Can she find a way into the cabin’s basement, where the girl is chained to a post, before the kidnappers return? And can she keep herself alive when they realise what she’s up to?
It’s here that Thompson and her Minnesota accent come into their own. Barb has no flair for heroics. Her motivators are decency and sympathy for someone desperately in need of help. She’s improvising all the time with occasionally bizarre results. And she’s distracted by memories of happier days on the lake with Carl – memories dramatised in flashback with Thompson’s daughter, Gaia Wise, as the young Barb.
Emma Thompson in Dead of Winter.Credit:
The conclusion, which also takes place on the lake, is pure pulp fiction with Greer working herself up into such a screaming frenzy that the whole film sinks into absurdity.
Nonetheless, Thompson emerges from the surrounding mayhem with a performance both credible and touching. It has no unnecessary flourishes and she and the landscape collaborate to compelling effect.
Reviewed by Sandra Hall. In cinemas Thursday, November 27.
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