Editorials
Snowed In: 10 Chilling Winter Set Horror Movies!
There’s something about horror movies set in winter that makes for an added layer of dread. The dreary, sunless skies could be a factor in setting a grim mood. But it probably has more to do with the fact that the harsh winter weather makes for an added serious threat. It’s one thing to fight off an unrelenting killer with a pickaxe in a summer camp, but it’s even trickier when the battle is smack in the middle of a blizzard. If the killer doesn’t finish you off, the freezing temperatures surely will. These 10 chilling winter set horror movies make things extra difficult for the protagonists and will make you want to burrow under a warm blanket.
The Shining
The Shining is a worthwhile watch any time of year, including the 4th of July. But the very setup, in which Jack Torrance and his family take up residence in the Overlook Hotel to watch over it during the harsh winter months, means that the snowy winter months are peak viewing conditions. The Torrance family is isolated inside, slowly terrorized by the hotel’s ghosts within, while the outside world is cut off from them due to major blizzards. The unrelenting snowfall factors into the third act in a major way, making you feel the cold from the comfort of your couch.
Curtains
Six young actresses are spending their weekend at a remote mansion enduring what may be the most eccentric audition for a movie role. Naturally, it’s the perfect setting for a masked killer to start picking them off one by one, and it just so happens to be winter. There aren’t very many slashers set in icy weather, and Curtains takes full advantage of its winter setting. The most memorable kills involve the creepy masked killer using the weather against the victims, including the film’s best death sequence set on a frozen pond. Sickles and ice skating equal bad news.
Blood Glacier
Sometimes winter set horror is too bleak. Enter Blood Glacier, an Austrian horror comedy about the discovery of a strange liquid leaking from a melting glacier in the Alps, and its bizarre affect on local wildlife. As in, that red liquid is turning everything into deadly mutated creatures. This is pure camp that doesn’t take itself seriously, and delivers spit-taking lines like, “Stop eating that banana while you’re crying!” Memorable characters, monstrous creatures, and an icy mountain setting means Blood Glacier is a winter wonderland of silly horror meant to be consumed among friends.
Storm of the Century
The residents of Little Tall Island are trapped without outside access thanks to a dangerous blizzard that only continues to worsen. Trapped with them is an ominous stranger, who quickly makes a statement by murdering a long-time neighbor. Penned by Stephen King, Storm of the Century builds suspense as the stranger continues to dangle his motivations out of reach while exploiting the darkest secrets of the residents. The outside world may be dangerous thanks to harsh weather conditions, but sometimes inside is even more dangerous.
Ghost Story
Based on Peter Straub’s beloved novel, Ghost Story tells of two generations of men haunted by the same woman. The snowy New England winter setting is perfect for this tale of the supernatural; it chills inside and out. There’s an old tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas time, and while this isn’t a Christmas movie, it is a great example of why the tradition exists in the first place. Alice Krige owns this movie, and legendary artist Dick Smith’s special makeup creations are worth the price of admission alone.
Frozen
Often in winter set horror, the setting keeps the characters trapped in place with the killer or supernatural entity closing in around them. Adam Green refreshingly makes the weather the thing to fear in his survival thriller Frozen. A weekend getaway at a ski resort in New England becomes a harrowing fight for survival for three skiers when they’re trapped on a chairlift high off the ground. An incoming storm has the resort shut down, with no one aware that anyone was left behind. Worsening conditions means time is an urgent matter as the trio face frostbite, wolves, each other, and death. This one will make you rethink going outside during winter.
Trollhunter
Before director André Øvredal unnerved with The Autopsy of Jane Doe, there was this fantastic twist to Norwegian folklore. A group of students venture into the frigid forests to investigate a series of unusual bear killings, but find something much more dangerous is responsible. The landscape plays a major factor into this stunning world, and Øvredal quickly establishes an eye for detail. The fascinating mythology and great special effects make this a fun watch, and gives a new spin on the found footage subgenre.
Cold Prey
A group of five friends snowboarding in a secluded area of the mountains in Jotunheimen are forced to find shelter when one breaks their leg. They take refuge in a deserted lodge, completely abandoned save for the homicidal maniac dubbed the Mountain Man. Cold Prey is a fantastic modern slasher with a stunning snowy backdrop that does factor into the group’s fight for survival. Suspenseful, brutal, and with one of horror’s most underrated final girls in Jannicke. Cold Prey 2 is also great, and borrows heavy story cues from Halloween II. So, make it a double feature.
We Are Still Here
Similar to Ghost Story, this too is a ghost story set in 1979 New England winter, though this particular supernatural haunter is more closely aligned with the works of Lucio Fulci. Couple Anne (Barbara Crampton) and Paul Sacchetti (Andrew Sensenig) move into a new home in a rural area after the loss of their only son. Deep depression in a dreary winter would be enough for any couple to contend with, but their new home happens to be the cursed Dagmar house and its just awoken from a 30-year slumber. It’s hungry for blood. We Are Still Here takes a quiet haunted house story and revs it up to an explosive, gory finale.
The Thing
Of course, no winter set horror list could exist without the pinnacle of movies set in sub-freezing temperature. John Carpenter’s The Thing is pure paranoid perfection. A shape-shifting alien flees from a Norwegian research station and finds solace in the American research station in Antarctica, before viciously consuming its victims and assuming their appearance in this glorious special effect driven spectacle. The sub-zero setting means there’s no place to flee, and the crew soon turn on one another as it becomes less clear who is still human. Even if they can defeat the monstrous entity, surviving the elements is far less certain.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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