Review: 'Dead of Winter' is a gradually ludicrous thriller, nearly ennobled by Emma Thompson's earthy and edgy performance

Justly acclaimed actor Emma Thompson labors mightily to raise the one-against-all thriller “Dead of Winter” to heights that its pedestrian writing and directing can only dream of reaching — but can’t quite hit.

Emma plays a widow — her name is Barb Sorensen, though that’s so immaterial we only learn it in the movie’s final moments — driving through the frozen woods of rural Minnesota. She’s driving a beat-up Ford pick-up truck, carrying an ice-fishing hut and a small tackle box whose importance grows as the movie proceeds. 

While seeking a particular lake, she comes up to a cabin and gets directions by a bearded man (Marc Menchaca). This would be inconsequential, if Barb hadn’t later heard a gunshot, and seen the man chasing a young woman (Laurel Marsden) in the woods. Barb circles back, and sees that the man is holding the young woman hostage. Barb soon realizes the man has a wife (Judy Greer), who’s the brains of the operation, and a good shot with a rifle — putting a bullet into Barb’s arm.

What follows in director Brian Kirk’s frozen thriller is a series of set pieces, set either around the couple’s cabin or out on the ice near Barb’s hut, in which Barb tries to stay ahead of the couple and fulfill her promise to rescue the young woman. Those moments are intercut with flashbacks of a young Barb (played by Gaia Wise, Thompson’s real-life daughter) and her boyfriend-turned-husband, Carl (played by Cúán Hosty-Blaney), over different stages of their courtship and marriage — and why the lake and that tackle box figure prominently in their lives.

The script, by Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb (who has a cameo as a hunter who comes across Barb), starts promisingly, dispensing its information in measured doses to increase the tension. Unfortunately, as we learn more of what Greer’s character is plotting, the story becomes more ludicrous.

Thompson, the great actress that she is, undoubtedly worked on an authentic rural Minnesota accent — a tough assignment for a movie that was actually filmed in Finland and Germany. But it’s hard to listen to Thompson as Barb and not be put in mind of Frances McDormand’s performance as the down-to-earth cop in “Fargo.”

Still, it’s refreshing to see a thriller like this entrusted to two strong women actors like Thompson and Greer, and the cat-and-mouse games between will keep viewers riveted — before the plot mechanics kick in.

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‘Dead of Winter’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 26, in theaters. Rated R for violence and language. Running time: 98 minutes.