“The Wind” begins with a group of Old West settlers rocked by a traumatic event that went down moments before. Their long, grim faces, the film’s chilly color palette, and a dead baby tell viewers everything they need to know about this brutal and unforgiving world. Directed by Emma Tammi, “The Wind” presents a bleak and atmospheric slow-burn horror story with a western flavor. Fans of nerve-racking movies “The Babadook” and “The Witch” are most likely to fall under this picture’s cold spell.
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It’s sometime in the 1800’s, and Lizzy (Caitlin Gerard) and her husband Isaac (Ashley Zukerman) are a couple of settlers out in the American frontier who live by themselves on an isolated stretch of land. With no one around for hundreds of miles, the married couple buries themselves in their daily routines as they work towards a better life. Everything changes when another couple arrives and takes up residence in a cabin not far off. It’s this relationship between couples where screenwriter Teresa Sutherland gets stingy with the narrative details. The story jumps around in time and teases out what happened between the two households while Lizzy deals with something sinister in the present timeline. Lizzy believes that some evil entity visits her home under cover of night; a dark force that possesses whatever it encounters.
It may seem like a back-handed compliment to say that the best part of a film is the sound design, but in horror movies, the right sound cues are vital. The superb clarity of the sound effects in “The Wind” has a visceral impact that elevates the scare-factor a few notches higher than it would have been otherwise. Every gunshot, slammed door, and scream pounds viewers’ eardrums like a pair of jackhammers. The sound design creates the feeling your senses are under assault, frays your nerves, and keeps one’s fight or flight instinct on constant red alert. Not to be outdone by the sound engineers, cinematographer Lyn Moncrief brings his A-game and jam-packs the picture with striking visuals. Gorgeous establishing shots capture a sense of nature’s grandeur, and they’re equally haunting, conveying Lizzy’s loneliness and isolation from the rest of the world.
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Tammi has a keen eye for staging a shot and is clearly skilled at wrenching the most scares out of the film’s set pieces. “The Wind” doesn’t have the production values of “Hereditary” or “The Conjuring,” but squint, and at times, this movie looks on par with its bigger-budget contemporaries. However, looking the part isn’t enough, and “The Wind” doesn’t have that same “It” factor those previously mentioned horror films do. The director stumbles too often to earn a place alongside those blockbuster horror flicks. This is a slow burn horror movie built on atmosphere and an escalating sense of dread, but there are spots where the tension falls slack, sapping the energy out of the story – and some the cast’s shaky line readings don’t help matters. A great horror movie feels like riding a roller coaster but “The Wind,” at times, becomes a carriage ride through a dusty ghost town.
That being said, “The Wind” belongs to Caitlin Gerard. A few other actors pop in and out, but she anchors every scene and is the driving force for the story. Gerard has a difficult job, playing Lizzy as though she is being haunted or descending into madness. Each choice requires the actor to leave a different trail of performance breadcrumbs throughout the narrative. Occasionally, it feels as though “The Wind” is unsure which path it’s going down, making Gerard’s job all that more difficult. To her credit, she nails it, portraying a range of emotions, all of them convincing, during Lizzy’s dark descent. It’s unfortunate that the rest of the cast aren’t performing at her level.
The horror genre, historically, offers a subversive entry point into difficult discussions (“Get Out,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Dawn of the Dead,” etc…), and this movie is a perfect analog for the #MeToo era; A monster targets a helpless woman and terrorizes her with impunity while the man in her life refuses to believe the story. It’s just a shame then that this film squanders the obvious opportunity, resulting in a technically sound picture that lacks profundity. “The Wind” still checks enough of the right boxes to please horror fans; it’s creepy, features some gruesome images, and has a couple standout scares. This film also has its share of flaws; it’s held back by some pacing issues and weak performances. Overall, “The Wind” is a solid narrative debut from Tammi, a documentary filmmaker, and delivers enough bright spots to leave viewers hungry for whatever she does next. [C]
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