2 out of 5

Directed by: Emma Tammi

The Wind, a Western kinda horror / kinda psychological thriller, told via the same slow and moody approach of The Witch, wants to be about more than it is.  This is almost meta-textual, as the extreme isolation faced by frontierswoman Lizzy (Caitlin Gerard), during the long days and wind-swept nights she’s often left alone in their miles from nowhere farmhouse by husband Isaac (Ashley Zuckerman) – has her seeing things, and hearing things, and attributing such things to ominous ‘something’s out there’ monsters.

But is there anything out there?

The movie cuts back and forth: ‘neighbors’ – a mile away – move in; the wife, Emma (Julia Goldani Telles) doesn’t seem cut out for this living this way, flitting between light flirtations with Isaac and bemoaning her husband’s lacking values and missing the city; the movie opens with her dead body, and her dead baby.  So, no, she couldn’t cut it, and we witness fleeting – very fleeting – moments leading up to that, and moments after it, when maybe Lizzy can’t quite cut it either.

And there are some very compelling elements therein, both conceptually and visually, but writer Teresa Sutherland seems wary of turning this into a gender study and so very much avoids any too suggestive dialogue or actions, while director Emma Tammi is conflicted over maintaining subtle dread or pushing supernatural suggestions… meaning we’re operating in a sort of flat middleground that’s not committed to any particular m.o.  Meanwhile, the sound effects during smash cuts between scenes are amped up to 19, which is lazy shorthand for a jump scare effect and feels at odds with the movie’s tone, as though the sound designer went ahead and decided on outright horror.

Boiled down to something more minimal or amped up to something more direct might’ve shaped The Wind into an effective thriller or horror flick, but as it only nibbles from each genre, there ends up not being enough to sustain it, even at less than 90 minutes.