Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

There are worse movies out there, esp. on Netflix. The acting is not as horrible as some reviews state; the two primary characters on high on drugs, keep in mind. It's kind of campy, kind of suspenseful, and like a lot of movies has plenty of moments where you want to yell "what are you thinking?!?!?" at one of the characters.I appreciate some of the realism. This movie takes place in winter at night, when it is supposed to be freezing cold. The scenes in the snow (most of the movie) are clearly filmed with a fair amount of real snow. You see the characters breath in many scenes. Plenty of movies overlook these obvious visual cues.It's not terribly deep, and some scenes are over-dramatic (or not dramatic enough), but it gets the point across. Some sloppy editing. And just when you feel things are nice, cozy, and wrapped up, they throw in a neat little twist right at the end.

Dead of winter, also known as Lost Signal, follows Santos and McCoy, a young couple who are unknowingly slipped a high dosage of LSD at a New Years Eve party. As the drugs start to take effect, and the couple leaves the party, they start to become paranoid that someone is out to get them. After a car accident leaves them stranded in the woods, their trip continues gaining momentum as does their fear.I found this movie by total accident in the wee hours of the mourning. I was bored and needed some background noise while I was studying for finals. Before I knew it I was drawn in and hooked, not able to take my attention away from the movie. I've seen quite a few movies with the "Bad Trip" scenario, and hated most of them, but what makes this movie stand out from the rest is there is no madman, no monster, you are simply viewing two people who have no clue that they are having an extremely strong LSD trip. The actors who play the two mains do an excellent job of portraying this terrifying situation as well, both are very believable during the entire movie. I really had a good time watching this film. It turned out to be one of those random "it came from Netflix" gems I find now and then when sleep isn't an option. I highly recommend giving this movie a chance, it is very much atmosphere driven so don't expect ton's of story or over the top special effects. If it wasn't for the super cheesy special effects, that caused me many times to be reminded that what I was watching was only a movie due to how silly they were most of the time I would of given this film a bit higher of a score. But none the less I feel its worth your time.6/10 - Ritualistic The Liberal Dead http://liberaldead.blogspot.com

"This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?"I thought about this old drug warning commercial as I watched this film.Veteran television actor, Brian McNamara, goes behind the camera for this chiller, which(..without profanity)would be perfect fodder for Lifetime Movie Network. It feels, looks, and sounds like material that will wind up on such a channel as it is a very "television movie" type of film. Dead of Winter concerns a young college couple planning to move into an apartment together, heading there after a New Years Party where a joker both know, slips LSD in their drink(..they also snort some junk cut by a razor). Both begin to see hallucinogenic images and hear imaginary voices, which could result in tragedy as Kevin and Tiffany leave their SUV after believing they had crashed it in the woods(..brought on by Kevin who thinks he saw a man in the back seat), getting lost, looking for his apartment. Before going off the deep end entirely, they contact emergency dispatch at the sheriff's office, asking for help, complaining of being lost. So as Kevin and Tiffany run around in the woods, and through abandoned buildings, seeing and hearing things that aren't there, the sheriff, Carl Nasland(Brian McNamara), his emergency dispatch telephone operator, Nancy Caulderbank(Ella Joyce), and deputy Dani Moriarty(Lindsay Thompson)attempt to find them. The key to what ails those trying to find their whereabouts is the fact that Kevin and Tiffany are so out-of-sorts any chance of reaching their cell phone signal is ruined because they keep hanging up. Al Santos, as Kevin, summons Jack Torrence, in a rather embarrassing performance. He devolves into a psychotic, while Tiffany herself loses grip on reality. The peril soon shifts from Tiffany, it seems, to Dani, who, despite Carl's warnings to wait until she has back-up, goes in after the kids, claiming that she knows the woods quite well. Sandra McCoy, as Tiffany, is for much of time, with Kevin, a nervous, indecisive young woman who seems to want to please him, despite reservations..we see early on that there are "faults" in Kevin's character, how he leads her into a party she's uncomfortable with, eventually partaking in smack and drink(..one shot really, but it is enough). Director McNamara employs various methods to explain just how messed up our leads are, with images distorted and misshapen, loud score, and heavily using sound effects, such as voices whispering(..in Kevin's case, he answers the cell phone and hears Tiffany's voice when it's Nancy on the other end of the line), animal growls(..this is what Tiffany experiences), and noises. Kevin and Tiffany often see people, but McNamara never establishes human features, just shadowy figures never quite in frame. I think this is an ambitious film for McNamara, who seems interested in scaring you, but I found it rather average, to be honest. The leads spend most of the screen time constantly moving. A problem, I think, that ails this movie is the limited time we have with Kevin and Tiffany before their terror, before they come apart at the seams. Practically the entire running time, besides those scenes outside the godforsaken woods, has the two in some state of psychological duress. If you like Lifetime thrillers, you might enjoy this one. The attempt at a twist at the end I thought fell flat and wasn't needed really. The dreaded snow plow only factors in one major scene as it "chases after" Kevin.

Many people have made the experience that they were staying in a foreign city and went out in the night for a drink into an inn only 10 or 15 minutes foot-distance remote from their hotel. And although they were not drunk and thought that they did memorize the way from the hotel to the inn, they did not find their way back again. Somebody to whom this happened in Vienna has told me that for his great luck he finally found a taxi that brought him back to the hotel. When he entered the taxi, the cab-driver laughed and said: Are you sure that you don't want to walk? It's just around the next corner. When they arrived there, the cab-driver showed him on a map that the man must have walked more or less in circles for about an hour - and every time turning into the false last street before the hotel, as if he had been magically attracted by "an evil force".The colleague who told me this episode also described that from minute to minute his fear was increasing. Now, imagine he had been drunk. Then, it could have happened that he would not have been able to wave a cab towards him, as busy as Vienna is during the night. He might have ended up on a parking-bench, or even worse in the Vienna-river or in a Danube canal. Orientation means the semiotic mechanism to move our body safely through a labyrinth of contradictory information which has first to be deciphered in order to serve to reach the goal of our movements. If this semiotic mechanism collapses, which means that the signs cannot be deciphered anymore, we are not only lost in the outer, but also in our inner world."Lost Signal" (2007) shows this complete loss of information step by step, caused by LSD or a related drogue which seems to paralyze practically wholly the capacity of orientation of the two protagonists. Their own visual perception starts to create monsters, the words heard at the cell phone have completely changed their meaning and sense. When orientation is gone, the human is no longer a semiotic being, because with the orientation he has lost its environment. Therefore, he becomes his own environment, projecting demons created by his brain into the vacuum of where the environment used to be. Although I cannot judge if the world of appearances caused by LSD is correctly depicted, I can tell that the movie does a magnificent job. This movie did not go out of my head (as many thematically related films did), it has this "mystical" glue that sticks to your brain.