Icefall: Throwback Thrills Without the Chills

Icefall wants to be many things. A survival thriller. A revenge tale. A meditation on history. But, like a snowmobile with a dying battery, it sputters. The film's greatest strength is Joel Kinnaman, whose presence continues to be an odd but consistent pleasure. He plays the lead like a man genuinely weathered by grief and cold, delivering the kind of performance that deserves a stronger vehicle. Fans of his work will find enough here to make the trip worthwhile, though they may be left wondering why no one else on screen seems quite as committed.

It’s also a poignant experience seeing Graham Greene in one of his final roles. He shares a few key scenes with Cara Jade Myers, whose character is tasked with threading an indigenous narrative strand through the plot. The effort is earnest, even admirable, but underwritten. You can feel the filmmakers wanting to do right by the cultural weight of these characters, yet the screenplay keeps sidelining them in favour of cartoonish baddies and limp shootouts.

Danny Huston plays the main antagonist, he’s supposed to be a cold-hearted villain overseeing some vague criminal empire, but he’s costumed like someone wandered off the set of Hudson Hawk. He's meant to radiate menace, but it’s hard to take him seriously as he is all swagger, no real danger.

That, in a way, sums up the rest of the ensemble. The supporting villains are neither scary nor memorable. They posture, they squint into the snow, but there's no tension in their threat. The film never quite decides whether it wants to be grimly grounded or B-movie bonkers. This tonal indecision means the violence feels oddly weightless, and the stakes never really land.

Visually, the film occasionally manages a chill that’s more than just atmospheric. There are wide, wind-bitten shots that remind you how isolating snow can be. But these moments are sporadic. The editing is choppy, and the score doesn’t help—it pushes emotional beats too obviously, drowning out what might have worked better in silence or stillness.

Still, for those of us who grew up on a diet of VHS survival thrillers, there’s a strange comfort in the clunkiness. It made me think of Runaway Train (1985) which is a far superior film of course, but one that understood how to extract character from environment. Icefall, by contrast, leaves its cast stranded in more ways than one.

And yet, I don’t regret watching it. Maybe it’s the Kinnaman factor. Maybe it’s the bittersweet sight of Graham Greene, reminding us how much presence can be packed into a glance. Or maybe it’s just that sometimes, even a snowbound misfire has its place, especially on a lost evening with low expectations (and warm socks.)