Dead of Winter (2025) Review – Emma Thompson and Judy Greer Shine in a Frozen Nightmare

Dead of Winter 

Directed by: Brian Kirk

Written by: Nicholas Jacobson-Larson, Dalton Leeb

Starring: Emma Thompson, Judy Greer, Marc Menchaca

Release Date: September 26th, 2025

Genre: Thriller / Horror

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4/5)

Dead of Winter (2025) is a tense, character-driven thriller starring Emma Thompson and Judy Greer in against-type performances. Directed by Brian Kirk, this icy survival story mixes suspense, realism, and powerhouse acting into a chilling, unforgettable ride.

When Familiar Faces Turn Terrifying

Dead of Winter stars two beloved actresses—Emma Thompson and Judy Greer—in harrowing roles that reshape how we see their talents. Thompson, the English icon of literary dramas and refined wit, and Greer, the sweet-natured sidekick and genre regular, both step far outside their comfort zones here.

Each performer has built a career on warmth and relatability, but Dead of Winter weaponizes those associations to suspenseful effect. These aren’t “playing against type” performances for shock value—they’re rich, layered turns that twist our expectations into dread.

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A Frozen Journey into Fear

Emma Thompson plays Barb, a widowed Minnesotan woman whose accent and demeanor are as comforting as a cup of cocoa on a frozen lake. Her husband’s recent death has left her adrift, but she’s determined to honor his final wish—one last ice-fishing trip to the remote Lake Hilda.

Her day begins with simple rituals: packing the truck, braving snowy backroads, and setting up her fishing gear. But when Barb gets lost and stops at a lone cabin for directions, her quiet grief collides with something far more sinister.

There, she encounters a disturbed man in a camo jacket (Marc Menchaca). His explanation for the blood outside—“deer blood”—does little to calm her unease. When she later witnesses the same man dragging a screaming young woman back to the cabin, Barb faces a terrible choice: risk her life to intervene, or flee and hope someone else finds help two hours away.

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Judy Greer’s Chilling Turn

Barb’s rescue attempt brings her face to face with a mysterious woman in purple, played with eerie intensity by Judy Greer. Frail, sickly, yet fueled by a drug-induced fury, Greer’s character commands the situation—and her accomplice—with ruthless precision.

It’s an astonishing transformation for Greer, whose empathetic screen presence makes her descent into menace all the more frightening. Her character’s obsession and physical collapse intertwine, creating a villain both human and horrifying. Greer plays it straight—no camp, no overacting—just cold conviction.

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Taut, Realistic, and Relentless

Screenwriters Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb keep Dead of Winter lean and focused. There’s no wasted dialogue, no contrived subplots—just tension, realism, and the relentless ticking clock of survival.

Director Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones, 21 Bridges) knows exactly how far to push the stakes. Unlike many thrillers that pile on implausible injuries or absurd coincidences, Dead of Winter stays grounded. The pain feels real, the geography logical, the survival tactics clever but believable.

Thompson’s Barb is resourceful without becoming superhuman. Greer’s villain, meanwhile, is terrifying because she believes in what she’s doing. Kirk’s pacing and stark compositions turn the snowy wilderness into a psychological maze of isolation and fear.

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Final Thoughts

Dead of Winter is a sharp, chilling thriller that strips the genre to its essentials: character, tension, and atmosphere. Emma Thompson delivers one of her most physical and emotionally raw performances, while Judy Greer redefines what audiences thought she could do.

It’s a film about resilience, moral conviction, and the quiet strength that emerges when terror closes in. Dead of Winter may take place in the frozen north, but it burns with the heat of two unforgettable performances.

Verdict: Smart, suspenseful, and anchored by two exceptional actresses, Dead of Winter is one of the most satisfying surprises of the 2025 horror-thriller season.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977): A Hateful, Sensory Nightmare Masquerading as a Movie

Looking for Mr. Goodbar 

Directed by: Richard Brooks

Written by: Richard Brooks (based on the novel by Judith Rossner)

Starring: Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Tom Berenger, William Atherton, Tuesday Weld

Release Date: October 19, 1977

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5)

Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) is one of the most hateful, chaotic, and misogynistic movies of the 1970s. Despite Diane Keaton’s best efforts, Richard Brooks delivers a cinematic disaster that blames women for their own abuse and murder.

(Just a note, I intended to write a positive review of a Diane Keaton movie in the wake of her passing. This movie was recommended to me as one of her best performances. She's as good as she could be under the circumstances. Apologies to Keaton fans.)

A Film That Punishes Women for Existing

Wow. What a piece of trash.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a sensory nightmare — a film of utter chaos and incoherence. It’s as if Richard Brooks set out to punish both the audience and his lead character, Theresa Dunn, for daring to exist outside of patriarchal norms.

The message? If a woman is sexually liberated and steps away from her family, she’s asking to be taken advantage of, abused, or even murdered. That’s not subtext — that’s the actual takeaway of this movie.

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Diane Keaton Tries to Save a Lost Cause

Diane Keaton plays Theresa, an innocent woman trying to escape her suffocating Catholic family. Her reward for that independence? A string of emotionally and physically abusive men.

Her first boyfriend is a married professor who tells her, post-coitus, “I just can’t stand a woman’s company after I’ve f*ed her.” Charming, right? From there, she meets Tony (Richard Gere), a swaggering sex addict who uses her and disappears. Every relationship is another humiliation.

Between the chaos of her love life, we get scenes of Theresa tenderly teaching deaf children — a transparent attempt by Brooks to “redeem” her for the audience, as if to say, See, she’s not a total whore! It’s moral policing disguised as character development.

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A Gallery of Awful Men

Every man in this movie is an abuser, and yet the movie blames Theresa for their actions. James (William Atherton) starts out as a nice guy — until she rejects him, at which point he becomes obsessed and violent. Then there’s Gary (Tom Berenger), a gay man introduced in a bizarre, incoherent parade sequence who exists solely to embody Brooks’ twisted sense of sexual panic.

By the time Gary snorts cocaine, rapes Theresa, and stabs her to death, the film’s point becomes clear: women who seek sexual freedom are doomed. Brooks frames it as tragedy, but it’s really moral punishment.

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Misogyny and Madness Behind the Camera

Beyond the hateful message, Looking for Mr. Goodbar is simply bad filmmaking. Brooks shoots everything like he’s terrified of silence — televisions blare, radios scream, extras wander across the frame, and the camera jitters as if the operator is drunk.

It’s an exhausting sensory overload, a constant assault on the viewer. The noise isn’t atmosphere; it’s incompetence.

Even Tuesday Weld, playing Theresa’s sister, gets thrown under the bus. The film frames her as a “good girl gone bad” — promiscuous, drugged up, and punished by the story. Every woman in this movie is either a saintly mother or a damned whore. There’s no in-between.

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The Verdict: A Cruel, Hateful Relic

Looking for Mr. Goodbar isn’t just bad — it’s offensive. It’s the kind of movie that pretends to explore sexual liberation while secretly despising it. The story blames women for male violence, then pretends to offer a moral lesson about “dangerous lifestyles.”

This isn’t provocative art — it’s propaganda for repression.

Even Diane Keaton can’t save it. Despite her honest, layered performance, the movie uses her as a punching bag for Brooks’ toxic worldview. The result is an angry, ugly, morally bankrupt mess that deserves to be forgotten.

Final Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ — 1 star for Diane Keaton, 0 for everything else.

The Cider House Rules: Cloying, Sanctimonious, and Unbearably Shallow

The Cider House Rules 

Directed by Lasse Hallstron 

Written by Lasse Hallstrom 

Starring Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, Michael Caine, Paul Rudd

Release Date January 7th, 2000 

Lasse Hallström’s The Cider House Rules turns complex themes of abortion, morality, and human choice into a syrupy sermon. A cloying, shallow Oscar darling that proves even the best actors can’t save a movie this hollow.

When Sentimentality Smothers Substance

Lasse Hallström’s cloying, simpering direction grates on my nerves. His 1998 feature Chocolat was arguably the nadir of his soft-focus, soft-headed romanticism. Hallström favors simple emotional beats over shading or moral complexity. He likes his dramas black and white—no gray, no grit, no blood. It’s drama for toddlers, scrubbed clean of anything that might sting.

But as bad as Chocolat is, The Cider House Rules may be even worse. Working with writer John Irving, Hallström adds sanctimony to his simplistic brew. Now, not only are his characters devoid of depth, they’re indignant about it.

The Cider House Rules takes the early, ugly years before Roe v. Wade—a time when women risked their lives for autonomy—and turns them into a homey parable about “doing what’s right.” The result is a Hallmark-card sermon about moral courage with all the danger and ambiguity stripped away.

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The Story: A Moral Dilemma Without Any Weight

Tobey Maguire plays Homer, an orphan raised in a New England orphanage by the kindly Dr. Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine). Larch, in addition to running the orphanage, performs secret abortions for desperate women. He begins teaching Homer medicine—and abortion—hoping the boy will carry on his work. But Homer, uncomfortable with the practice’s legality and morality, leaves to find his own way.

When Homer meets Candy (Charlize Theron) and her boyfriend Wally (Paul Rudd), he leaves the orphanage to work on their family’s apple orchard. With Wally away at war, Homer and Candy fall into a forbidden romance. But dark secrets emerge when one of the orchard workers, Arthur, impregnates his daughter Rose (Erykah Badu). Homer faces a moral crossroads that should carry devastating weight—but doesn’t.

Because under Hallström’s soft lighting and swelling strings, the story feels sanitized. Homer’s moral awakening—whether to help a woman abort her father’s child—plays like he’s deciding between steak or fish at dinner.

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Hallström’s Hallmark Aesthetic vs. Harsh Reality

Surprise: Hallström’s gauzy, sentimental style misses the point when tackling a rape-incest-abortion storyline. There’s no tension, no internal struggle, no real sense of consequence. The film desperately needs a director with emotional heft, not one obsessed with moral tidiness and gentle lighting.

Instead, every difficult decision feels preordained, as if made during a commercial break. The result is a movie that congratulates itself for tackling “tough” subjects while sanding off every rough edge.

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Oscar Night Regrets: The Great Michael Caine Robbery

If I sound bitter toward The Cider House Rules, I am—but my bitterness extends to the 2000 Academy Awards, where Michael Caine won Best Supporting Actor for this performance.

That year, Tom Cruise delivered one of the greatest performances of his career in Magnolia—a volcanic, vulnerable masterclass that laid bare the emptiness inside a man hiding behind charisma. Cruise’s work was electric and fearless. Caine’s was cozy and predictable.

When Caine won, it felt like Hollywood was rewarding comfort over challenge, tradition over innovation. The Cider House Rules was easy to watch, easy to forget, and utterly unworthy of that moment.

And that cloying line—“Goodnight, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England”—still makes me cringe.

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Final Thoughts

The Cider House Rules is the epitome of Oscar bait: a self-satisfied, sentimental drama that mistakes moral platitudes for emotional depth. It flatters its audience instead of challenging them, offering easy answers where none exist.

In a just world, this movie would’ve been forgotten. Instead, it stands as a cautionary tale of what happens when Hollywood mistakes sincerity for insight.