This land. There's something wrong with it.
The Wind is a 2018 western horror film directed by Emma Tammi in her directorial debut, starring Caitlin Gerard, Ashley Zukerman, Julia Goldani Telles and Miles Anderson.Lizzy and Isaac Macklin live alone on a remote stretch of land in 19th century America, where the wind never stops howling. A series of strange occurrences convinces Lizzy that something sinister is haunting them, which is made even worse when a newlywed couple, Emma and Gideon Harper, arrives on a nearby homestead.
The film premiered at TIFF on September 10, 2018, before getting a wide release in the United States on April 5, 2019. It has a tie-in game
by Airdorf Games, the indie dev behind FAITH: The Unholy Trinity.
Not to be confused with the 1928 silent film The Wind.
This film provides examples of the following:
- Accidental Murder: Lizzy inadvertently stabs Isaac in the neck with a broken piece of glass when she tries to alert him to a sinister shadow cast on the roof behind him.
- Ambiguously Bi: Emma seems to be as attracted to Lizzy as she is to Isaac and seems intent on using the baby she claims she had with Isaac (whom she'd name Isaac if it's a boy and Lizzy if it's a girl) as a way to force a threesome. Lizzy wasn't having any of it.
- Ate His Gun: After finding the Reverend's corpse on her way back to the house and the copy of the Bible she buried earlier left on her doorstep (and finding out that the grave she buried it in was undisturbed), she places the end of her shotgun in her mouth in preparation to shoot herself. However, Isaac arrives in time to prevent this.
- Black Eyes of Evil: When the Reverend inadvertently exposes his true nature to Lizzy, his eyes turn black and he starts speaking in a demonic voice.
- Blood from the Mouth: Emma hits Lizzy in the mouth when the latter tries to get her to come out from under her bed, leading to Lizzy wiping a trickle of blood off her lip.
- Cassandra Truth: Emma and Lizzy insist to their respective husbands that something sinister resides on the land they are living on, but they do not take it seriously. It's left unclear whether or not Gideon or Isaac were in the right.
- Downer Beginning: The film opens with Lizzy and Isaac burying Emma's stillborn son along with Emma, who has had half her face blown off.
- Downer Ending: By the end of the film, Emma and Isaac are dead and Gideon has left, leaving Lizzy alone with no one else around. Lizzy has also clearly gone insane.
- How We Got Here: After the Downer Beginning above, the film shows everything leading up to that point.
- Kind Restraints:
- When Emma insists that a demonic presence is after her child and hits Lizzy, Lizzy suggests that Gideon tie her to their bed.
- Toward the end of the film, Lizzy wakes up to find that she has been tied to her bed by Isaac because he believes that she has gone insane.
- Left Hanging: The film does not explain some events:
- Was the dead goat that Lizzy encountered real, or a hallucination?
- Did Emma actually commit suicide with Lizzy's shotgun, or did Lizzy kill her?
- Was the Reverend really possessed by a demon, or was Lizzy hallucinating?
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's left unclear whether the overtly supernatural events that occur throughout the film actually happened or were merely imagined by Lizzy and Emma in their descent into madness, or a combination of both.
- Minimalist Cast: There are only four major characters in the film. The Reverend only appears in a few scenes, and some other people arrive to clear out Emma and Gideon's homestead for one scene.
- No Name Given: The Reverend is never named, not even in the end credits.
- Title Drop: The wind is mentioned several times throughout the film.
