Dead of Winter is one of those films where you sit through it, and wonder how the fuck it ever got made.
Barb (Emma Thompson) has lived in the back-end of Fargo-like North Minnesota for decades, but now her husband for all this time has passed away, she’s clearly lost her marbles, because while it’s the depths of the festive season outside, she still thinks nothing of going out driving with regular tyres, and then seems surprised that she gets stuck.
How stupid – Anyone who really lived out there would’ve long put their winter tyres on by then!
And how come she doesn’t have a hunting rifle when encountering errant wildlife? Surely that’s what everyone out there would do, for their own safety.
Similarly, at one point she’s surprised she has no signal on her mobile phone… as if she wouldn’t have figured out how to deal with that a long time ago?!
Still, at this time in her life, her task is to fulfil hubby Karl’s wishes and take his ashes to Lake Hilda and scatter them. Unfortunately, while out and about, she comes across a dodgy couple with no real names given – Purple Lady (Judy Greer – The Long Walk) and Camo Jacket (Marc Menchaca – Ozark Season 1) – who we learn have kidnapped a young woman, Leah (Laurel Marsden – The Pope’s Exorcist), for specious reasons.
It’s just cliché-central with Dead Of Winter… Why would Barb put her life in danger trying to rescue the girl, without calling the police instead?
And somehow, this practice is far from straight-forward, because the kidnappers are incredibly crap! Even the Wet Bandits from Home Alone would make a better job of it!
Elsewhere, at one point, a character says, “This whole thing is fucking batshit!”. Yes, you summed up Dead Of Winter accurately.
Add in a scene where, following an injury, Barb is sewing herself up, just like Maya in The Strangers Chapter 2, and… Fargo? More like Farg-0 Out of Ten!
Well, I will give Emma Thompson one… out of ten, for a hilarious fight scene at one point, and then for this film at least having an ending, even if it is daft.
In fact, Ms Thompson put more effort into the amusing intro for Sense And Sensibility‘s 30th Anniversary than this entire film. No-one will be lauding a 30th Anniversary for Dead of Winter, that’s for sure!
And obviously, it’s going to take the full 92 minutes of the film for Barb to deal with the baddies shooting at her, but I did spot at least 3 or 4 moments when she could’ve brought things to a head much sooner.
Needless to say, when you find a gun and have bullets, take time to aim… don’t just randomly shoot and run out of ammo!
At least there was one surprising thing with this film. It gave me a chance to check out the new seats at Odeon Trafford Centre.
Screens 7-12 have been closed off for a few weeks, but I saw they’d been reopened at the last minute, and Dead of Winter was given a showing in screen 9.
It has 3 rows of these new seats, and I went for one right at the back, since the other two had people booked in the middle. These three rows replace four rows’ worth of the blue shitty seats they had before (can’t think of another way to describe them), and I actually thought Odeon were putting in the black leather IMAX-style recliners, but no. I’m not sure what fabric these are, but they’re… okay.
On the plus side, you can stretch out to your heart’s content. Well, at 5’7, I can. If I was 6ft, maybe not.
On the downside, yes – there’s a small table for every two seats, but not only can it NOT be turned around like the IMAX ones, also almost every time I put my arm on the side of the chair where the table is, I kept banging into it!
Additionally, you’re quite high up from the row in front, so as soon as one of them gets their phone out, you can’t escape the glare! …and I did say this to one person using theirs. In the end, they turned the brightness right down to the point where I was amazed they could still read it, but it’s quite sad that they were getting it out every 10-15 minutes, and then just used it constantly towards the end.
Also, from right at the back, the screen’s a bit too small for me, and my vision’s not 100% sharp at that distance. The optimum distance for is in the two rows of ‘normal’ Premiere seats, so I’ll sit there in future for this screen. For those, the seats have been re-covered. And since there’s a big gap between those and the first row of fancy seats behind you, you’ll no longer get mouth-breathers right behind you, kicking your seat.
However, after all the time and money spent on this refurb, going back to those blue shitty seats… They’ve just been left. And still look shit. At the very least, I thought they’d replace them with the sort of basic grey seats in screens 1-6, which are about the same width as a Premiere seat, but can’t fold back up like the blue shitty seats.
This picture was taken at the end of the showing, which was for Dead of Winter‘s sole showing at 8.30pm. Not massively busy, but it hadn’t been cleaned up after Hocus Pocus beforehand, hence more crap around.
If they were charging extra for these while on Limitless Plus, then I wouldn’t pay for it, but it’s at least included in that. Not sure about regular Limitless, but then the difference is only £24/year between Plus and non-Plus, so worth the extra, generally.
NOTE: There are NO mid- or post-credits scenes.
Dead Of Winter is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 98 minutes
Release date: September 26th 2025
Studio: Vertigo Releasing
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
cinema: Odeon Trafford Centre
Rating: 1/10
Director: Brian Kirk
Producers: Jon Berg, Jeff Boulton, Jonas Katzenstein, Maximilian Leo, Greg Silverman, Gideon Yu
Screenplay: Nicholas Jacobson-Larson, Dalton Leeb
Music: Volker Bertelmann
Cast:
Barb: Emma Thompson
Purple Lady: Judy Greer
Camo Jacket: Marc Menchaca
Leah: Laurel Marsden
Young Barb: Gaia Wise
Young Karl: Cúán Hosty-Blaney
Younger Hunter: Dalton Leeb
Karl: Paul Hamilton
Lawyer: Lloyd Hutchinson
Tall Hunter: Brían F O’Byrne
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.