The Greatest Winter Movies Ever Made (Part 2)

By Jon Abrams

December 10, 2025

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Welcome to the second and final half of DG’s list of capital-W Winter movies!

Before we plunge into the polar depths, here’s a thought: Do you ever watch movies and think about how they’re not just a fun way to pass two hours, but flickering records of moments in time that will never return? Around this time of year, families get together and watch old movies like IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (or, if you’re a little… touched like me and my people, BABES IN TOYLAND).

Do you ever think about how many fashion choices and hairstyles and even manners of speaking that you see and hear in these old movies are gone forever, only still alive briefly if ever for as long as these movies are up on the screen?

Nobody on Earth talks like Jimmy Stewart anymore. Nobody even does Jimmy Stewart impressions anymore. Observers always talk about how pop culture has the attention span of a puppy, but what I like about movies is that these snapshots in time are preserved forever in amber, ready to be reactivated. (I want you now to think about a legion of TikTokkers activated by IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE to start yawing like Jimmy Stewart on their latest streams.)

This is a moment where many are reflecting on the possible extinction of movies, once one of the great unifying pastimes in this country, in our lifetime. People still go to the movies, and young ones, by the way. People still watch “old” movies. There is always proof of life to be found at film festivals and the repertory circuit. Movies survived the arrival of TV. Movies survived the arrival of smartphones (sort of.) Movies survived the Covid-19 pandemic (barely).

Will movies survive the dawn of AI and the ever-encroaching monoliths of oligarchy and corporate greed? Still a question at the time of this writing. What else is this newsletter, after all, but its own snapshot of a moment in time? 

Here’s one more thing to think about: Will there be a moment, somewhere in our likely future, where people will look at snow in movies and be as mystified by it as motorists on the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles are by the concept of rain?

Not sure about you, but I can’t remember having had a real-deal “white Christmas” in at least a decade, and even then, it was just a light glazing of frost. No matter what certain people want you to believe, there’s nothing political about science, folks. If you trip, you fall. That’s gravity. Feel free to yell “Fake news!” at the concrete sidewalk as it’s rushing up to meet your face, but science doesn’t stop for any malignant agenda.

It’s getting hotter on this planet. Sooner or later, one way or another, science comes for us all. Will we see a day where the very concept of newly-fallen snow on the ground is as quaint and old-timey to American kids of the future as Jimmy Stewart’s 1919 Dodge roadster and the archaic movie practice of rear-projections in driving scenes look to us now?

All of that is to say, our list of Winter movies is getting sort of bleak. Here we go!

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7. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (2008, d. Tomas Alfredson)

Another film set in the dead of winter, only this one takes place in Sweden, where I’m not sure if they even get any other season. Have you heard about this movie? It made just about everyone’s year-end best list back in 2008. It really is that good – atmospheric and affecting. It’s a story about a young boy, tormented at school, who meets an unusual little girl who moves into his apartment complex with her much-older companion. Safe to say, she isn’t what she seems. (I won’t reveal it here, but what she is becomes clear fairly quickly, although you’ll never guess how the story develops.) I feel like a movie that’s this good about showing the breath escape from a just-killed person on a freezing night is guaranteed a place on this list.

Honorable Mention: The American remake, LET ME IN, from 2010, made by current BATMAN director Matt Reeves. Nearly as chilly as its inspiration.

6. GROUNDHOG DAY (1993, d. Harold Ramis)

Harold Ramis with the double! Yeah, it’s a comedy. There’s a happy ending. Am I breaking my own rules here? Maybe – but remember how dark this particular comedy gets in the middle, even if it never relinquishes its hold on hilarious.

Quick synopsis, as if anyone needs it: Bill Murray, the most profound of comedians, plays a nasty, self-obsessed weatherman who finds himself reliving the most boring day of his life over and over in a quaint town in Pennsylvania. At one point, the monotony gets to him so much that he decides to take his own life. Which doesn’t work, don’t worry, but let’s see something that dark ever make its way into a Sandra Bullock comedy of similar vintage. Couldn’t happen. No one else has the guts. Bill Murray’s never been afraid of the big questions in his comedy, which is why he’s been so successful in more dramatic roles in recent years.  

Additionally, GROUNDHOG DAY is linked to an earlier wintry Bill Murray movie, SCROOGED, in a fairly depressing way – both movies feature Bill Murray encountering a homeless person who has died from ailments related to prolonged exposure to cold. In SCROOGED, the homeless guy is literally frozen, but in GROUNDHOG DAY, it’s arguably more upsetting since it plays out in a more realistic way. For a while there, Bill Murray was uniquely concerned about not letting the homeless freeze to death. It’s not a very humorous concern, but it sure the hell is something we could all stand to think about in this weather.

 

5. A SIMPLE PLAN (1998, d. Sam Raimi)

When people think of Sam Raimi, they are either thinking of the EVIL DEAD movies or the SPIDER-MAN movies. It takes a moment to recall that he had an intriguing transitional period between those two “trilogies,” where he started to merge his incredible horror-cinema skills with a slightly more mainstream sensibility. Some of these movies worked better than others, but I’d argue that all of them were worthwhile.

A SIMPLE PLAN is the best film from that period, adapted from a novel by Scott Smith and starring the stalwart Bill Paxton, the reliably great Bridget Fonda, and a hardly-recognizable Billy Bob Thornton. A trio of small-town guys (Paxton, Thornton, and the late great Brent Briscoe) find an abandoned airplane full of cash in the middle of the woods, and decide to keep the money. Things go bad. It’s better the less you know going in (I also recommend the novel by Scott B. Smith), so I’ll ruin no plot details – just please note that we’re now trudging deeper into the top five bleakest Winter Movies ever made, so you know I mean they go seriously bad.

4. THE SHINING (1980, d. Stanley Kubrick)

A Winter Movie rises in greatness proportionally to the level of movie star who is frozen solid at the end, and in THE SHINING, one of the hugest movie stars of all time is frozen solid.

This movie needs no introduction and it’s best remembered, fairly, for its terrifying and sometimes oblique horror imagery. (The moment with the highest pants-pooping potential, in my opinion, has something to do with a hotel room and someone in an animal costume.) Kubrick’s direction is as icy as that flawless camerawork by the legendary John Alcott. But beyond its status as one of the most memorable horror movies ever made, let’s not forget its Winter status. Jack and his family are cooped up in that spooky hotel all winter – it’s the season, even before the ghosts, that turns him into an unfriendly lumberjack.

3. THE GREY (2012, d. Joe Carnahan) 

“There are no atheists in foxholes,” as the old saying goes. But what about in wolves’ dens? I had been sold on this movie from the minute I was made aware that it was to be a survival drama where the great actor Liam Neeson faces off against a pack of hungry wolves. “Herman Melville meets Jack London meets Hemingway meets wolves meets Liam Neeson’s fists.” That movie would have been just fine. But this movie is better.

THE GREY is one of the more profound, dynamic, and uncompromising illustrations of existentialism I have seen on a movie screen in quite a while. Interestingly, some religious groups embraced the movie, although I’m not sure it’s saying what they may want it to be saying. And some environmental groups were bothered by the portrayal of the wolves, which is well-intentioned but misses the point. Liam Neeson’s character views these wolves with a kind of respect.

And think about the title. Did you get a look at the wolves in the movie? Didn’t look very gray to me. They looked almost black, blending in and out of the night with ease. These aren’t real-world wolves. These are something else. The wolves in THE GREY are an engine, relentlessly forcing the sands through the hourglass. In my reading of the title, “The Grey” refers to that space between existence and non-existence, between the white of snow and the black of death. No, this isn’t a movie about wolves. This is a movie about mortality.

Many fans of the movie have noted how THE GREY structurally resembles a typically horror movie, as the cast of characters are gradually winnowed away, and maybe that’s true, but in that case I’ve never seen a horror movie that treats the ranks of the culled with such care.

Most of the characters who die in THE GREY get sent out on a moment of dignity, even grace, or at least as much as can be mustered. (There is one major exception, maybe the most upsetting death in the entire film, but that is the one that prompts the film’s most important emotional moment.) This is a movie that shows many people dying, yet it is the rare such movie that happens to value life: because of its proximity to death.

This movie is what that feels like. Wolves and winter – those are visual trappings meant to illustrate an idea. The point is, there may come a time in your life when everybody you know starts dropping like flies at the hands of some relentless cosmic flyswatter, and then what are you gonna do? Pray to God? Good luck there. Worth a try. Maybe He answers your prayers. Maybe He doesn’t answer. Probably he doesn’t answer. Now you’ve got a choice to make. Or maybe there isn’t a choice at all. “Fuck it. I’ll do it myself.” That is, in fact, a profoundly spiritual decision.

2. THE GREAT SILENCE (1968, d. Sergio Corbucci)

If you’ve seen Sergio Leone’s THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY, then congratulations! You’ve seen the greatest movie ever. 

But even if you’ve seen every Western that Leone made (which you ought to), you’ve only scratched the surface of the vast reserve of wonderfulness that is Italian Westerns. Among aficionados, Sergio Corbucci’s THE GREAT SILENCE is among the best-regarded of those movies – it’s about a mute gunslinger (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who tries to help a small community who have been besieged by vicious criminals led by the ever-disturbing Klaus Kinski. And it all takes place on a wooded frontier blanketed with snow – even the poor horses have a hell of a time getting anywhere.

The astonishing vistas of the Italian valleys and the wistful loveliness of costar Vonetta McGee are only more heart-breaking in contrast to how deep into existential sadness this movie summons up. 

THE GREAT SILENCE has probably THE down ending of all time, and the score by Ennio Morricone (already immortalized on this list for his contributions to ORCA) is one of the most haunting I’ve ever heard. I’m dead serious, this movie is bleak. If you think you can handle it, then I couldn’t recommend this movie any more highly.

1. THE THING (1982)

Skip the 2011 remake, with all its obvious CGI and sound stages, as much as Mary Elizabeth Winstead is as fine a stand-in for Kurt Russell as we’re ever gonna get. This right here is the G.O.A.T. It’s the first movie that comes to mind when I think about Winter movies. Accept no substitutes, or more specifically, beware all imitations. What can be said, at this point? John Carpenter remade a sci-fi classic by his hero, Howard Hawks, and arguably, he beat it.

It’s still a brilliant set-up – a malicious shape-shifting alien being plagues twelve guys manning a research station in Antarctica – and the follow-through is equally brilliant, between the direction by Carpenter, the imagery by cinematographer Dean Cundey, the effects by Rob Bottin, the score by Ennio Morricone (him again!), and the eclectic ensemble cast of character actors (some you’ve seen before; some who were never seen again), led by Kurt Russell and the legendary Keith David. The end result is the greatest movie that T.K. Carter was ever affiliated with NOT named DOCTOR DETROIT.

It’s arguably Carpenter’s masterpiece. It’s definitely one of the top ten horror movies ever made. It’s a classic in science fiction, a classic in horror, a classic study in isolation and paranoia, and it’d be all of those things even without that remarkable ending, which is legendarily, chillingly, ambiguous.

John Carpenter has said that he has the answer to the famous question in that ending but he has never revealed it, and naturally I have my own take on it, even while Keith David allegedly settled the question once and for all when he said “It wasn’t me.” But what do you make of it? Who was it? Childs? MacReady? Is it me? See the movie (again) and let’s hear your opinions!

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

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