A Long Winter Review: A Deep Family Drama!
The winter is a time some dread and some celebrate. With dark mornings, early sunsets, and the brisk cold that follows us everywhere, it can range from a wonderland to a time of depression and desperation for warmer and brighter times. Winter can often produce some of the most breathtaking natural scenes, where snow covers the ground like a blanket and coats the trees softly. It can also strip away life from trees, grass, and old towns.
Also Read – “Paper Tiger (2026)” Movie Review: An Intense Thriller!
For Mike’s (Fred Hechinger) family, winters in the snowy mountains of Colorado in the 1950s divides them, his father Lester (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and himself finding solace in the simple life and comfort of home while Mike’s brother Tommy (Kit Connor) and mother Louise (Caitríona Balfe) wish to find their way out. As Tommy prepares to head to Korea for the war, Louise is left behind yet another year with Mike and Lester, grappling with the urge and desperation to free herself from her desolate life.
A Long Winter is a family drama in the most accurate sense of the phrase that although sometimes struggles to hold a lasting impact on its audience, is able to develop a truthful and well-rounded story of freedom versus complacency through Haigh’s direction.
A Long Winter extends its story to its max, creating an elongated journey through a family’s emotional turmoil upon the beginning of the coldest Colorado season. Utilizing a plot point that is typically an addition to scripts that move a story along, the film prolongs the pain the family feels in the wake of their mother’s actions, focusing on the aftermath and how each character handles Louise’s decision.
The audience can see the heartache and desperation Louise feels living a life in the shadow of Lester’s dreams, foreshadowing a potential shift in the family’s dynamic, even if Mike sees it as a shock. By compressing the story in a way that highlights the day to day effects of Louise’s decision as it continues on through the entire winter, Haigh has developed a script that burns slowly to mirror Mike and his father’s path to carrying on.
The film is shot in a beautiful manner rather than to symbolize bleakness, a choice made by Haigh that ties in the central themes of the movie. Where some see the Colorado mountains as a dazzling spectacle of nature, others may see it as a desolate and isolating existence being away from the rest of the world. However, even in the vast scope that Haigh shoots A Long Winter, it possesses a lack of freedom tied to Louise’s mentality where all one can see are rows and rows of trees that seem to lead to nothing past the horizon. Being able to shoot the film in a way that can be both breathtaking yet isolating is Haigh’s way of honing in on the dichotomy of the season and the different feelings it brings to each family member.
As Haigh often examines, queerness is an idea that is brought up through Mike’s character upon the arrival of Jimmy (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) a domestic helper that comes to stay with Mike and Lester. There are instances in the film that awaken Mike’s feelings of attraction and desire for other men but it is never fully examined. However, an argument can be made for this in that Mike lives in a place he has known as home forever. Thus, he has not been able to experience life elsewhere and the people that often come with this.
In this way, he still is not able to fully understand his own identity while living a life of complacency in the mountains. Thus, the incorporation of queerness in the film at the level it is shown has an evident meaning in the scope of Mike’s character. A Long Winter has a strong director as its captain, allowing it to thrive in moments that may have fallen flat otherwise. However, it feels a little bit too small in its range struggling to leave the emotional or lasting impact it wishes to. It guides the audience in the direction it wishes without too much pondering or examination past the credits but overall it does highlight Haigh’s talents as a filmmaker in his own right.
‘A Long Winter (2026)’ Rating – 3.5/5
Follow Steph (the Author) on IG – @cinemasteph_7
- A Long Winter Review: A Deep Family Drama! - October 6, 2026
- Paper Tiger (2026) Review: A Fresh Entry in the Mob Drama Genre! - October 6, 2026
- Coyote vs. Acme Review: A Blast From Beginning to End! - September 9, 2026
