An elderly lady wearing a ski suit perches on a camping stool in the middle of a frozen-over lake with a fishing rod, small rucksack, and thermos flask. Why? Hearing a burst of gunshots, she whips out her Nokia mobile phone—“no service.” The percussive classical music crescendoes as she instinctively runs to investigate. A young woman with an injury above her eye is tied up in the basement of a desolate house, threatened by a man with a gun. The lady from the lake scrawls “I won’t leave U, I promise” with her finger on the grimy window.
“Dead of Winter” (Tackle Box Productions), now showing at the Montrose Playhouse, is best described as a mystery story. What connects these two teasers? Like lead character Barb, played by Emma Thompson, the movie wanders haphazardly hither and thither, panting, blending folksy and expletive-laden dialog uneasily together. When Barb ignites the fuel in her car to attract attention with the flames, she says, “Come on; come on ya stinker!” She seems to buy the male kidnapper’s abdication of responsibility when he says, “My wife—she made me do it.” Perhaps he has redemptive qualities, or perhaps she recognises something in him. He returns her engagement ring—lost in the kerfuffle— to her. “Look at me; I need help,” he begs after falling through the ice into the lake’s freezing water, and she is willing to forgive. “He got pretty sick after falling into the lake,” she says. “He needed a doctor.”
It transpires that it is the female kidnapper, an ex-operating-room nurse, who is the mastermind—and who rarely speaks without swearing. “She is dangerous as all heck,” Barb tells the riflemen who turn up having seen the blaze. “I’ll be darned. She didn’t kill me.” The nurse-come-kidnapper is addicted to fentanyl; smuggling drugs across the U.S./Canada border explains the backdrop of frozen-lake Minnesota.
Much of the film takes place on or nearby the lake; here, the quality of cinematography shines through the hazy plot. The white-blue-grey light at various times of day is captured beautifully by the filmmakers, especially during a nice scene where the kidnappers are hauling a sledge. The freezing weather is too. (The film is shot in Finland, Belgium and Germany.) The short scene where the male hostage-taker tumbles into the lake is amplified by the performance of the actor who plays him, Marc Menchaca, in the scenes that follow.
Because Barb seems to be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, his character is the most ambiguous—the audience is interested to learn whether her faith is misplaced. Mr Menchaca has really kicked around his portrayal of a frost-bitten, hypothermic, heavy-drinking, desperate man who realises unusually early in the film that his situation is hopeless. Barb’s role is a bewildering cross between Miss Marple and MacGyver (one of the credits is for a “Personal Trainer to Mrs Thompson”). It’s inconceivable for a relationship with the woman she saves to bloom when their conversation is so hamstrung by the screenplay: “I don’t want to die,” says the hostage. “That’s good. That’s a good thing,” says Barb.
Aside from Mrs Thompson’s casting as a Minnesotan, with the need to put on a specific accent (and that personal trainer), what is curious about this film is why the filmmakers didn’t seek a family-friendly 12A-certificate. To achieve this outcome, two changes would have been required—one, to remove the guns and two, to cut the swearing—both of which would have been an improvement. The idea of an elderly saviour-sleuth kicking in doors and freeing herself from handcuffs and metal chains stretches the boundaries of belief for the audience.
At several points, Barb needs to chivvy up the hostage, who is ground down, flagging, and despondent. Barb has seen a great deal in her life, and can now be sanguine about it. “We don’t know what’s coming,” Barb says. “We never really do. It don’t matter. We never quit.”
Adam Poole
10th October 2025
If you are interested in viewing this screening, please book your tickets here
