Because fewer and fewer production companies can afford (or want) to film in the USA, it is becoming increasingly common for Toronto to double as New York or Cape Town to double as Los Angeles. The audience has long since gotten used to this, but of course a little is still lost if the film is not filmed on original locations to save budget. “Dead Of Winter – Icy Silence” by “21 Bridges” director Brian Kirk is one of the few exceptions: Financed with German funding, among other things, the Finnish alternative setting is so spectacular that it is hard to imagine that a shoot in the US state of Minnesota would have produced similarly breathtaking settings. Especially since snow-covered landscapes and frozen lakes, 7,000 kilometers as the crow flies, are not so easy to assign geographically anyway.
In addition to its setting, the film's other major asset is double Oscar winner Emma Thompson (“Howard's End”). As befits a decent thriller, there is no cell phone reception in “Dead Of Winter”. But in order to find out, the newly widowed Barb not only has to dig out her Nokia bone (which of course fits the filming location perfectly with the slang nickname “Finnish briquette”), but she also has to put on a pair of glasses. Unlike such omnipotence fantasies like “Nobody,” “Dead Of Winter” takes the age of its protagonist pleasantly seriously, even if, given Thompson's patent courage, you never doubt that she will somehow get the supposedly hopeless situation under control. Unfortunately, the reserved tension curve cannot keep up with the strong leading actress.
Barb (Emma Thompson) knows how to help herself in extreme situations, even if she doesn't immediately develop superhuman abilities.
Barb (Emma Thompson) goes on an ice fishing trip to the much colder north of Minnesota, to the lake where her recently deceased husband Karl (Paul Hamilton) asked for her hand in marriage decades ago. However, the thermometer not only shows -15 degrees, there is also apparently a snowstorm on the way.
Because she can't find the way straight away, Barb asks a man (Marc Menchaca) who is chopping wood in front of his hut for help – and discovers traces of blood in the snow. Although the bearded man immediately has an excuse ready, Barb senses that something is not right here. And in fact: The man and his wife (Judy Greer) are keeping young Leah (Laurel Marsden) prisoner in their basement – and it is of vital importance to them that Barb doesn't get in the way of their plan…
Primarily for Emma Thompson fans
Is the manageable voltage level really a “bug” – or rather a “feature”? After all, it's very clear who the target audience is here: “Dead Of Winter” is aimed less at sophisticated genre connoisseurs than at fans of the noble actress Emma Thompson, who are served their usual arthouse fare this time with an extra dose of suspense (although the gunshots in particular have a surprisingly blood-curdling boom). This may sound nastier than it is meant to be. But “Dead Of Winter” is a perfect contribution for the Montagkino on ZDF, which perhaps not entirely coincidentally is actually on board as a co-producer.
It's also fitting that the interspersed flashbacks, taken together, are reminiscent of the first minutes of the Pixar masterpiece “Up” – although the fast-track relationship (with Gaia Wise as young Barb) in “Dead Of Winter” sometimes seems very cheesy due to its holiday photo color filter. Then it's better to have Emma Thompson in the snowy nowhere, who doesn't act stupid in a thriller way, but on the contrary uses the experience of a whole life lived to remain calm even in the hail of bullets and approach the challenge pragmatically (which cannot be said about the two hunters who take on the matter in the meantime – they are well-meaning, but simply don't really listen to Barb).
The nameless kidnapper (Judy Greer) doesn't hesitate to use her rifle.
On the other hand, Judy Greer (“The Long Walk”) stars in a rare villain role. The “Jurassic World” star has it doubly difficult: On the one hand, she is made up to look sick and emaciated – and it would have been completely sufficient that she was sucking one fentanyl lollipop after the other the whole time, as if she were a Kojak update for the opioid epidemic. And on the other hand, their motivation and thus also the plot, even if the story as a whole is officially inspired by co-author Dalton Leeb's aunt, seem as if they came from a best-selling train station crime novel – with one or two logic holes that would certainly make for excellent ice fishing…
Conclusion: Emma Thompson and the Finnish winter landscape are an event. But the tension still only simmers on the low flame – and that may be a problem, especially at -15 degrees.