The Greatest Winter Movies Ever Made (Part 1)

By Jon Abrams

December 06, 2025

In partnership with

Here in New York City today, it’s a toe-freezing 21-degrees. December has officially arrived, which makes it a good time to look at some of the greatest Winter Movies ever made.

There aren’t as many of them as you’d think — probably because the majority of folks who make the movies live in Los Angeles and they don’t have the same meteorological issues and complications and philosophical quandaries to ponder.

So what makes a great Winter Movie? First of all, forget the holidays – we’re not doing that happy-joy-joy nonsense when we talk Winter movies. A Winter movie isn’t about celebrating, and it probably doesn’t end happily. A great Winter Movie may or may not have snow in it, although all of my choices do, so maybe that is a measure after all.

OK, so a great Winter Movie convincingly depicts snow. That’s number one. But it goes much deeper than that.

At heart, a great Winter Movie must make you feel COLD. Just watching it, regardless of season, will make your private bits shrivel and your appendages vicariously ache and feel that cold in your bones. A great Winter Movie leaves you lost and snowblind and deeply suspect at the very concept that springtime will ever come.

But first…

Here are ten contenders that just missed my list, some for no good reason:

DIE HARD 2 (1990, d. Renny Harlin. Too Christmas-y.)

THE EMPTY MAN (2020, d. David Prior. See the opening Bhutan sequence. 

THE HATEFUL EIGHT (2015, d. Quentin Tarantino. See also: CUT-THROATS NINE from 1972, which directly inspired it.)

HOLD THE DARK (2018, d. Jeremy Saulnier.)

INSOMNIA (2002, d. Christopher Nolan.)

THE LAST WINTER (2006, d. Larry Fessenden.)

ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1951, d. Nicholas Ray. Fellow Robert Ryan fans, see also: DAY OF THE OUTLAW, from 1959.)

RAVENOUS (1999, d. Antonia Bird)

WINTER’S BONE (2010, d. Debra Granik)

SNOWBEAST (1977, d. Herb Wallerstein) 

continued…

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The following handful are the movies that I chose. It’s more than a top ten, because this is an under-discussed subgenre and as I’m sure people will tell me, there are still plenty more that I could have named! 

12. THE ICE HARVEST (2005. d. Harold Ramis)

It’s well past time to reconsider THE ICE HARVEST as an anti-holiday classic. The sole noir-type film we ever got from comedy Buddha Harold Ramis, this is a lemon-sour crime movie teaming up two of the great Christmas cranks of our time, John Cusack (BETTER OFF DEAD is a Christmas movie!) and Billy Bob Thornton (BAD SANTA).

They play a pair of angry losers who rip off mob money but then run into a hell of a time getting out of town, due to worse-than-usual seasonal weather. Randy Quaid plays the deranged gangster they robbed, and listen, if you don’t think Randy Quaid can be scary, you ought to check out Randy Quaid’s social-media footprint. Or this movie.

Connie Nielsen, Mike Starr, and particularly Oliver Platt are note-perfect in their roles, and I still can’t get over how gleefully nasty the movie is, coming from Harold Ramis, who by pretty much all accounts was nothing but joyful in life.

11. ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (2008, d. Werner Herzog)

In keeping with his absolute lack of fear at jumping right into foreign situations, the iconoclastic director Werner Herzog made this documentary about daily life at McMurdo Base in Antarctica. (This is not the only movie on this list that is set at a base on that continent…)

As with every one of Herzog’s documentaries I’ve seen, there are moments of bizarre eccentricity and moments of extreme sadness and sometimes both at the same time. Herzog makes profound observations about an isolated culture made up of people who have abandoned the rest of the world, and captures otherworldly images that will blow your mind. The underwater footage literally looks like life in another galaxy! 

The must-see moment in this movie happens when a penguin goes insane and heads off alone to certain death. Come on now. It’s so cold down there, a motherfucking penguin loses his shit. When Herzog warns you at the beginning that this ain’t no MARCH OF THE PENGUINS, he isn’t kidding.

10. NEVER CRY WOLF (1983, d. Caroll Ballard) 

This movie is based on a book by Farley Mowat, a famous naturalist, and it’s about a scientist who is sent to the Arctic to study wolves who have been wrongly blamed for a drop in caribou numbers. At one point, our hero strips down and goes au naturel, which is meant to indicate that he’s gone native, but really is the kind of thing that wants you to put a coat on the guy, and that’s not meant as an insult.

Directed by former documentary filmmaker Caroll Ballard (THE BLACK STALLION, FLY AWAY HOME) with images from Hiro Narita, it stars Charles Martin Smith (AMERICAN GRAFFITI, THE UNTOUCHABLES, STARMAN), Brian Dennehy, and a bunch of wolves. My parents took me to see this movie in the theaters since I was fascinated with animals of all kinds when I was a kid, still am, but that means I haven’t seen this movie in over thirty years (holy crap I’m getting so old! Talk about Winter!) and still it makes my list.

That’s some memorable cold.

9. ORCA (1977, d. Michael Anderson)d 

I’ve written about ORCA before, in the context of its intentions as a post-JAWS horror movie, but ORCA’s major cinematic contribution is less its ability to scare you, and more its ability to make you shiver in the literal sense.

The movie is set on the wintery coasts of the Canadian North, and killer whale or no, these people are getting in the water. Crazy! The feeling gets more frigid as the movie’s action moves away from civilization. As star Richard Harris, playing a sort of guilt-ridden Ahab, pursues the vengeance-crazed killer whale further and further north, the scenery goes white and looming ice floes are as dangerous as the primary threat.

Things don’t end well for the human half of the cast, so be forewarned: this list gets ever bleaker from here on out.

8. FARGO (1996, d. Joel Coen)

One of the touchstone movies of the 1990s, this movie probably needs little introduction. If you love movies, you’re probably a Coen Brothers fan, and if you’re a Coen Brothers fan, you’ve seen this one.

It’s set in Minnesota in the dead of winter, and while serious critics can go on and on about the originality of the screenplay and of the choice of a pregnant police chief as protagonist, all I think of when I think back to this movie is “BRRRR.” That refers to the cold existential state of criminality displayed in the movie, sure, but mostly to the physical reality that a state of constant snow and ice presents.

Essential Winter Movie scene: William H. Macy as Jerry Lundegaard, frustrated and furious, venting his blind rage on his iced-over windshield with an ice scraper. We’ve all been there, Jerry. Unless we live in California, Texas, or (shiver) Florida.

Next time: The final seven! Don’t forget your mittens!

If you have your own suggestions for great Winter movies, please share them at [email protected]!

If we get enough responses, we’ll run them on Daily Grindhouse!

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