I love when the horror and Western genres collide. Any time a project mixes the two, it will have my attention. Today that means director Emma Tammi's film THE WIND has my attention, because it tells a story of supernatural horror in the setting of 1800s America.
Starring Caitlin Gerard, who has experience with supernatural horror since she was in INSIDIOUS: THE LAST KEY, THE WIND was written by Teresa Sutherland and
explores an unseen evil as it haunts the homestead in this chilling, folkloric tale of madness, paranoia, and otherworldly terror.
Lizzy (Gerard) is a tough, resourceful frontierswoman settling a remote stretch of land on the 19th-century American frontier. Isolated from civilization in a desolate wilderness where the wind never stops howling, she begins to sense a sinister presence that seems to be borne of the land itself, an overwhelming dread that her husband dismisses as superstition. When a newlywed couple arrives on a nearby homestead, their presence amplifies Lizzy’s fears, setting into motion a shocking chain of events.
Gerard's co-stars include Ashley Zukerman, Julia Goldani Telles, Dylan McTee, and Miles Anderson.
IFC Midnight will be giving THE WIND a theatrical and VOD release on April 5th. Before we reach that date, there will also be special screenings in New York and Los Angeles, with Emma Tammi in attendance for Q&As at a couple of them.
New York Special Screening
Friday, March 22 at 7:00PM at IFC Center – Q&A with Emma Tammi
Los Angeles Special Screenings
Tuesday, March 12 at 1:30PM at Soho House Screening Room
Tuesday, March 26 at 7:30PM at The Egyptian Theater – Q&A with Emma Tami
Explaining the title and the importance of wind in the film, Tammi told Syfy Wire that Sutherland was drawing from the real life stories of women who lived on the American frontier in the 1800s.
There were a lot of accounts of women losing their minds on the prairie during this time. And a lot of them chalked it up to the wind. There are really amazing journals and essays — that are now collated and accessible — that paint a picture of that time and space so vividly. These women were just so strong and endured so much that I think the loneliness and the melancholia and the maybe insanity that they experienced just felt really relatable. When you read these accounts of what their daily life was like — let alone a winter, let alone a year — you kind of think, 'How did they even stay as sane as they did?' This is a land and this is an experience that no human was ever meant to take on. That does seem like a really fun jumping off point actually for a horror film. Because when you throw people in the middle of the space that is basically telling them to get out, it's a great jumping off point for the supernatural and horror elements."
That sounds very interesting to me. I'll be checking out THE WIND for sure.
Give the trailer a look below and see if this looks like something you'd like to watch.