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Canada, United States · 2016
Rated R · 1h 29m
Director Rob Connolly
Starring Joel Kinnaman, Tom Holland, Rachelle Lefevre, Percy Hynes White
Genre Drama, Thriller
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A divorced father wants to bond with his sons, so he takes them to the woods to teach them to shoot. When they are stranded by a brutal winter storm, the boys begin to suspect their supposed protector may be their biggest threat.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by
Kinnaman, a Swede, is good in small doses – say, as Mireille Enos’s sidekick in the TV series The Killing – but he’s no leading man. He gives us zero insight into Elliot, so he never makes us care about him. This film will be remembered (if at all) as one of the things Holland did before he was Spider-Man.
The New York Times by Andy Webster
[A] competent but slight thriller.
This is irrefutably Kinnaman’s movie, but Connolly fatally undervalues him. He doesn’t trust his actor to walk the emotional tightrope his film stretches taut before him, to sell us on the idea of a father digging himself deeper into a hole of his own design.
One comes to resent the film for how it thrills to the possibility of a father hurting his children.
The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck
Kinnaman delivers a superb turn.... Holland and White also are excellent as the boys who still love their father even while becoming ever more aware of his failings. Their quietly terrified reactions to his escalating belligerence is far more emotionally wrenching than the tired thriller genre conventions to which the film ultimately succumbs.
RogerEbert.com by Godfrey Cheshire
A very suspenseful, atmospheric mounting and sharp acting by its small but expert cast.
Village Voice by Luke Y. Thompson
Director Rob Connolly may well think he's upping the stakes by plunging his film into borderline horror territory, but in fact he's minimizing them.
Los Angeles Times by Michael Rechtshaffen
A frostbitten B-movie can still provide a little welcome relief in the dead of summer. Edge of Winter suffices as a diverting breath of recycled cool air.
Connolly’s film, formerly titled less poetically, “Backcountry,” has a lovely, wintry tone and a few minor surprises. The action sequences are competently handled, even if there’s little real suspense about what is coming and where this is going.
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