"The Winter Lake" was one of the most unpleasant film viewing experiences imaginable. The gist of the story is the relocation of a mother and son to a rural family property. The mother and son encounter a father and daughter, who are their neighbors. The narrative reveals an unspeakable atrocity in the past lives of the neighbors.

Elaine and her son Tom move into the old home known locally as "The Old Mutton Place." It is a dilapidated, ramshackle farm house, and the mother and son seem embittered towards one another. The countryside seemed especially bleak, and there was some unexplained mystery of the strange currents in the "winter lake."

Into the lives of Elaine and Tom come the dour neighbors, Ward and his daughter Holly. At the lake, Tom makes the grisly discovery of a skull and some skeletal remains. He comes to learn that a baby was drowned intentionally by Holly and that the father was Ward.

The most ghoulish scene in the film was the handling of the skull and Ward's vicious attempt to recover it and destroy the evidence. The ending of the film was especially clumsy without revealing what happened to both Ward and Holly. Did he drown? Did she escape? Did any of the viewers even care?

This film works on every level. The story is dealt with brilliantly. The boy and his mother return to a remote home where her grandfather lived in a big old house by a river. In a new house next door lives Holly. She and her father had a baby that they threw in the water. Tom the troubled boy finds the skeleton of the baby and saves it away in a box under his bed. The girl cries and tells him about her awful father and asks him to kill her dad who has abused her for years. The dad tries to kill the boy in the water. The mother saves him. The dad is dead. The daughter goes off with her boyfriend. The mother and son leave that place.

There's nothing at all thrilling about this movie, so let's get that out of the way.

It's a purposefully slow and colour-washed drama that is well acted but is low on story.