Directed by Brian Kirk and starring Emma Thompson, Dead of Winter is an action/survival thriller released in 2025 to quite positive reviews. It’s set in northern Minnesota, although filmed in Finland and Germany, and the landscape is beautiful: Kirk and cinematographer Christopher Ross really capture the frozen and vast desolateness of the upper Midwest of the US.
The plot of Dead of Winter begins with Barb (Emma Thompson), who is driving up to Lake Hilda in northern Minnesota (in off-and-on blizzard conditions) to scatter the ashes of her dead husband, Karl. Barb runs into a couple (who remain unnamed), who have kidnapped a young woman, Leah (Laurel Marsden) and are holding her captive in the basement of their cabin. Once Barb discovers Leah, she promises to save her – and most of the film concerns her indefatigable efforts, even as she becomes more and more injured, to rescue Leah from the couple. As the plot unfolds, it turns out that the couple aren’t evil . . . exactly. The woman (Judy Greer) is terminally ill with some unspecified liver condition; she works as an emergency nurse and encountered Leah when the latter was admitted after a suicide attempt. Knowing she needs a liver transplant to survive, and having the skills and connections to arrange one off the grid, the woman kidnaps Leah to be her unwilling liver donor, convinced she’s doing no harm as Leah wants to die anyway. (Of course, not surprisingly, when faced with her own prospective murder, Leah decides she wants to live after all.) The woman’s husband (Marc Menchaca) seems deeply opposed to what they’re doing, but feels obliged to help his wife.
