@rockmarooned Published Feb. 24, 2026, 9:15 a.m. ET Where to Stream: Dead of Winter (2025) Powered by Reelgood More On: emma thompson ‘Down Cemetery Road’ Episode 2 Ending Explained: Ruth Wilson Breaks Down That Crazy “Really Violent” Twist Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Down Cemetery Road’ On Apple TV+, Where Emma Thompson And Ruth Wilson Look For A Girl Who Disappears After An Explosion How is ‘Slow Horses’ Connected to New Apple TV+ Mystery Show ‘Down Cemetery Road’? How Many Episodes are in ‘Down Cemetery Road’? The Emma Thompson thriller Dead of Winter has been sitting atop the HBO Max charts for the past few days, as a blizzard has blanketed the Northeast. Now, streaming charts are famously inscrutable, and have nothing like regional data for breakdowns of who’s watching what. Sometimes box office articles will mention which theaters are the highest-grossing for particular films, but there aren’t any streaming press releases that mention how a certain six-block radius in Schenectady is really streaming the hell out of a particular film. Still, a connection seems likely: On Sunday and Monday, as a Midwestern amount of snow was falling for a solid 24 hours or more on the East Coast, this movie that takes place largely outdoors, in the snow and on the ice, in the aftermath of a blizzard, vaulted ahead of plenty of newer and better-known titles. Is this the first movie to top a streaming chart based not on recency, awards buzz, holidays, or the insatiable desire for more Jason Statham movies, but rather just pure weather?
It certainly seems that way, and if not, the appearance is almost just as good as a confirmation. Dead of Winter ascended the charts just as a previous calender-app-based chart-topper, the ensemble rom-com Valentine’s Day, continued its surprisingly slow descent. It’s a seasonally fitting if absolutely ghastly choice for a random mid-February watch (though, boy, if you were in the mood for a V-Day love story, do you have to be so literal about it?!). But it’s even more fitting to chase a moment of mid-February respite from the cold and slush with a movie that settles in for a long haul of almost unbearable chill.
Not that Dead of Winter – not to be confused with 1987’s Dead of Winter, the same-named but unrelated spooky-snowy thriller starring Mary Steenburgen – is especially long. The new film runs a tight 98 minutes or so, and it could be even shorter if it wasn’t larded with a bit of unnecessary backstory about Barb (Emma Thompson), a widow out in northern Minnesota intending to scatter her husband’s ashes out at the lake where they had their first date – ice fishing! Ambitious call, Barb’s Husband! – many years ago. Occasional flashbacks basically do the Up-style portrait-of-a-marriage number on this couple, which feels like, if not a miscalculation, certainly belaboring some details that probably could have been conveyed through stray lines of dialogue or just Barb looking at the Polaroid photo they took that date. (And she does that anyway, so, you know, the movie’s already most of the way there.) She’s played by Emma Thompson; you don’t need to convince us she’s sympathetic!
Most of the movie, though, hangs on a great hook. Stopping to ask for directions before arriving at the lake, Barb stumbles upon the scene of a kidnapping. An unnamed married couple (Judy Greer and Marc Menchaca) are holding a young woman (Laurel Marsden) for some nefarious purpose. There’s no town or cell service for miles and miles, her truck gets stuck in a lakeside snowbank, and Barb, being a good sort, takes it upon herself to rescue the woman. It’s great to see Thompson in this kind of role: a lead part, rather than a shticky supporting bit, making great use of her flinty later-career personality while also presenting her with a new challenge. (When was the last time she deigned to play an American in a lead role? Has she ever?)
Dead of Winter is set after at the tail end of what looks like a recent snowstorm; the roads aren’t clear, but the snow has mostly stopped falling by about the 15-minute mark, meaning that as cold as it all looks, the movie also functions as a fantasy of a time when blizzard-stuck folks might be able to leave their homes and engage in activities again, even if those activities range from looking, at best, miserable (ice fishing) and, at worst, quite dangerous (attempting to defeat armed kidnappers) or painful (sewing shut a glancing bullet wound). It’s not a woman-against-the-elements survival thriller, like a distaff version of The Grey; it’s a movie where the unpleasantness of the elements is just a part of life, one more obstacle that you Barb can’t fully dig around.
That gives Dead of Winter some kinship with Fargo beyond even the Midwestern accent Thompson gamely affects; that Coen film, about to celebrate its 30th anniversary, is probably the definitive snowy thriller that doesn’t place its characters directly at odds with the environment, only to have the characters find the environment nipping at their heels anyway. Dead of Winter is a genre workout, not a meditation on the peculiar sociology of the Midwest or the nature of human greed; in that sense, it’s more akin to the Megan Fox marital-strife survival thriller Till Death, which really ought to be climbing the Netflix charts at the same snowstorm rates as this one. Both films share an unfussy sense of craft, pacing, and immediacy in placing their characters into situations that seem practically impossible yet potentially surmountable.
Interesting, too, that both of these small-scale thrillers don’t bother with making the snow itself the enemy. Barb does turn her knowledge of the icy lake against one of her pursuers, but she’s also vexed by the post-blizzard inability to cover her tracks. Flurries can certainly look cool on camera, but just check out the barely-watchable Kate Beckinsale thriller Whiteout for a look at how dull genuine blizzard conditions can be on screen. It’s after the blizzard that the stir-craziness really sets in anyway, where the storm and potential coziness of being inside for it are both over, and life has go on through the mess. That’s sort of what Dead of Winter evokes through Barb’s tireless mission – though if that’s the film’s primary theme, it might go a little bleaker than intended. Still, it’s fun to picture the HBO Max viewership throwing this nifty little character-driven thriller on together, ginning up the courage to face another snowy day tomorrow.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn podcasting at www.sportsalcohol.com. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Guardian, among others.
