Drugs Are Bad, M'Kay?

Sometimes the generically named Instant Watch horror film you've never heard of just seems to call your name, begging with shy low expectations to be streamed with an open mind. Today, that generically named Instant Watch horror film I've never heard of is 2007's Dead of Winter.


Quick Plot: Young lovers Kevin and Tiffany stop by a stoner friend’s New Year’s party, toasting with an unknowingly LSD spiked shot and driving home like the responsible leaders of tomorrow they are. It takes a few quick hallucinations to drive the pair out of their vehicular safety and into the cold, lonely, and snow covered woods oozing with rusty barbed wire and dormant plows.

A confusing 911 call alerts the small town authorities. Concerned dispatcher Nancy senses something amiss, though the sheriff seems more worried about his love interest deputy following their trail. The film rotates between the two groups.

Dead of Winter (aka Lost Signal) is a surprisingly well-made little thriller, but it lacks just about anything to make it stick. Comparing it to another snowy set, generically named holiday horror like Dead End shows how something just isn’t there. Where Dead End took a cliche plot and spun it into a funny, scary, and oddly memorable tale, Dead of Winter just sort of happens. Leads Al Santos and Sandra McCoy are fine enough, but their characters never show an ounce of intrigue to really make us care. Give them a dog that needs walking or a cute in-joke they can chuckle over, something other than the fact that they’re young and pretty to make us actually want their love and lives to last.

The other half of Dead of Winter doesn’t fare too much better (it’s hard to invest too much in overly inept policemen) but the film salvages itself with a surprisingly touching coda. Avoiding spoilers, I’ll simply say that it’s rare for a modern dead teenager flick to think to consider the guilt and mourning of its adults.

High Points

First-time director Brian McNamara (also a veteran character actor) does a decent job of establishing some of the paranoia of our leads. Demonic voices and hallucinations could easily be laughable, and even though we as the audience are always pretty aware what’s not real, we can absolutely see why Tiffany and Kevin would get so freaked so fast

Low Points

The final “twist” doesn’t do much. I suppose it tries to make the audience rethink what they’ve just seen, but considering our heroes are already working with altered minds, what difference does it even make?

Lessons Learned

If your boyfriend’s friends are stoner jerks, avoid drinking anything they hand you not in a sealed bottle

A little knife can do big damage

In the absent night light, a cow is about the equivalent of a non-English speaking farmer

Rent/Bury/Buy

For a quick view on Instant Watch, one could do a whole lot worse than Dead of Winter. The performances are passable, cold night atmosphere effective, pacing nice and brisk. In other words, it’s perfectly fine...just not that special. Enjoy it on a light night when you feel like 80 minutes of mild entertainment. Or take an LSD laden cocktail* and have an even more interesting time.

*Note: The Deadly Doll’s House does not condone the use of hallucinogentic drugs. We’ve (okay, I’ve) seen Jacob’s Ladder and do not in any way wish to upset Macauly Culkin into becoming The Good Son.