Dead of Winter

Penn makes all this fun. He doesn't camp, though he's not above borrowings and homages, and you can count the Hitchcocks. Penn's approach is almost elegant, even though this is little more than a bauble. We're not supposed actually to believe any of it, but merely to come along for the ride. [11 Feb 1987, p.D7]

Mary Steenburgen is first-rate as the struggling actress.

True, this film is a suspense exercise with a frightened woman trapped in a house where she stands to lose her life. Some people would not call this kind of thing entertainment, and no one can blame them. Some people would find this story entertaining no matter how shabbily it was produced. [07 Feb 1987]

It's easy to pick holes in movies like this, to find the inconsistencies and the oversights and say the movie's no good because we're smarter than it is. But maybe that's exactly the point. Maybe the actual pleasure comes from the fun of being frustrated and full of free advice while the character marches to her doom.

Director Arthur Penn uses every trick in the horror book to pull this one off, but nothing really works, including his accent on scary noises. Everything is forced, contrived, and not too neatly lifted from other classic doppelganger films.

There’s an elegant sheen and sophisticated tone to Dead of Winter, but since it’s neither witty nor ingenious enough to be either genuinely amusing or suspenseful, it seems a bit morbid by default.

Director Arthur Penn (Bonnnie and Clyde) may have intended this to be a campy homage to Hitchcock, but instead he gives us a boring, frustrating and stupid story. [06 Feb 1987, p.A]