The Wind

The Wind. Easily one of the worst films ever made. The only good that comes from this kind of pointless drivel, is the fact that seeing films like this get distribution makes indy horror filmmakers like me confident that my upcoming feature will make the cut too. I mean, if this represents the market for indy horror, I could make a fortune videotaping myself taking out the garbage for 83 minutes.

A complete list of what this film lacks would take way too long to write out. But, the highlites are: no story, terrible acting, awful cinematography, and virtually no editing. That last one bothered me the most. As an editor myself, this film drove me absolutely crazy because it had almost no editing at all. Every scene was shot in a master. They had absolutely no coverage at all. For anyone who doesn't know..."coverage" is shooting a scene from multiple angles to have cutting options when editing to make for a desirable viewing experience. Yeah, this movie had none of that. I'm talking about even the simplest of scenes. Example: an ordinary conversation scene between two people sitting at a table would typically start out with a master establishing who's in the scene and where they are. Then, as the conversation goes on, you would cut back and forth to over-the-shoulder shots as the conversation continues. You may even throw in a cutaway shot or two of something on the table, or in someone's hand. Anything. This is "Film 101" stuff guys. It seems as though these people had no idea this is how films work. Every shot was a camera lock-down. No movement, no cutting, no nothing. If I was teaching a course in filmmaking, this would be the visual aid for my "What not to do" lesson.

In closing, don't waste your time folks. The only amazing this about this film is that it ever scored distribution at all.

I found this dvd in the store and figured, why not support some indy film and watch a cool horror flick. Please save your time and money and pass this one by. The acting, the script, practically everything with this film is sub par. There really isn't much of a story, and there is no character development. I found myself not caring what happened to the people in the movie as long as something happened. Everyone is supposed to be college age, but they all look like they are in their mid thirties, except for the woman who plays a mother who looks like she is pushing 40. In fact the worst part of the film is that every single scene is shown in a master shot. There is no editing, no cut ins or close ups. Do yourself a favor and skip it.

pretty disappointing. i was expecting more of a horror/thriller -- but this seemed to be more of an episode of dawson's creek but with out the acting. there were some very impressive shots, though -- almost worth seeing. maybe future efforts will improve.

No offense, but having seen this film, it is currently way, way overrated. The premise was cool. However, It was way way too slow in its story progression. In my humble film editor's opinion it could use at least 20 minutes of bad pointless dialog deleted. And if an opening prologue goes past 2 minutes, you know it is covering for a lack of proper script development. What great shots and what little action there was in the film were greatly overshadowed by the large boring bits of celluloid stagnation between them. And what is up with that mini softcore menage a trois in the middle of the film? Unto itself that was almost the best part of the film. Unfortunately it had little to do with anything else in the plot. Much like how the premise of the script had little to do with the script, which had little to do with this movie. If this were edited down to a concise 20 minute short, It would be a kick ass film. However dragged out as long as it is, it just sucks the wind out of you.

It is the early morning of our discontent, and some friends of mine and I have just gotten through watching "The Wind." Truly a disaster film. Not in the sense of forces of nature wreaking havoc on an unsuspecting populace, but rather an awful movie wreaking havoc on an unsuspecting audience. To give you an indication of how frustrating it was to watch this particular bomb, I'll give you an example quoted during my first pained viewing. If given the choice of watching this movie for a second time and, say, boiling myself, I'm afraid to say the choice would not be an immediate one. But rather than simply ranting "ad peliculam" with lousy one-liners, I'm going to get specific as to why exactly my friends and I panned this particular film.

To start this off, I like low-budget horror flicks. I even like artsy, low-budget horror flicks. I liked "Cold Hearts", "Midnight Mass," "Jugular Wine," etc. Films that were ambitious and daring, even if they were lacking in production value, execution and even acting. Generally, an interesting premise, unusual camera technique or merely just a well done scene or two will save a movie that is running a little rough around the edges. With these provisos in mind, I would like to say conclusively that I hated "The Wind."

The movie was probably most disappointing in the sense that it was incredibly frustrating to watch. From the actions of the main characters, to the flow (?) of the plot, to the big portents hinted at by the opening which ultimately aspired to dust (and did not even attach themselves logically to what transpired in the remainder of the film, and left the viewer, expecting something more, with a sense of much ado about nothing). The dialogue was spotty at best, woodenly delivered and completely unrealistic. By this I mean, no one in any of the situations that the characters were in would have reacted the way the characters did, or said the things that they said in the way that they said them. There was an obvious lack of vision and direction that would have corrected this problem.

Character interaction and development was abysmal. Claire, the "lambent sex goddess," or so the aggravating, passive-aggressive lamesters in the movie thought, was so overt in her manipulations she may as well have pulled a gun on the characters. Nevertheless, she was the shining high point of the film. The other main characters (with the exception of Mick's Milfy Mom, who was not terrible) are so indistinct that they may as well have been portrayed by the same actor. Let's see if I missed anything: borderline personality, co-submissive goons with profound feelings of sexual confusion and inadequacy, spurred to fits of puerile rage through the artless orchestrations of a loose-lipped bimbette-suddenly-and-unmasterfully-turned-Caligari. No, I think that about covers it.

Lack of scope was also problematic. How did those involved with the making of this film expect the casual viewer to derive that this was the beginning of the end of the world from this amateurish, unbelievable, poorly-portrayed lust pentagon (well, what would you call it?) that occurred largely in the woods in the middle of nowhere? There were no witnesses to the "atrocities" presented. There were no witnesses anywhere in this film.

The believability problems stemming from this lack of attention to detail were rife even from the point where the plot begins to sicken. Case-in-point: If that guy Bob took that route through the woods to come home from the gym, and here's the key, ****every day****, there's a jolly good chance that someone else would have been around to see something at some point afterwards while the perpetrators argued vociferously about the crime scene. One would think that with the murder of a young man in the woods, said town would have been in an uproar, the characters would have been questioned, etc. But instead, there wasn't a witness in sight (other than Earl, the closet psychopath with no inner monologue). We suggest that there be no witnesses *for* this film, either.

As for the quasi-homosexual meanderings present, I don't have a problem with those either. It's not as if they came as a surprise, considering we had been shouting as to the closet case stati of most of the male characters since the second scene. Again, not problematic in and of itself, but thrown in for the wrong reasons. It was utterly unnecessary, thrown in for pure "shock" and/or "dangerous art" value, and neither shocking nor dangerously artistic from any perspective. What we had instead was an awkward attempt to redeem a boring, clumsy movie with a boring, clumsy plot. The poorly hinted-at sexual tension, which was only hinted at heavy-handedly in anticipation of this flaccid snogging scene, only pushed this film further down the totem pole from "mediocrity warranting criticism" to "film sucking so bad that it lacks the inherent grace to suck enough to properly mock and harangue."

So it is with most of the film, a lot of artistic fumbling, very little meat and a lot of aggravation. It's not that we don't get it. Oh, we got it, alright. We just don't want it. Look, the very fact that we were cheering the bludgeoning in the final scene as the *only* tableau that made sense on its face is an indication that something was terribly wrong with this film. Rather than moving briskly along as its name implies, this movie oozed languidly forward like the sweat trail working it's way down the side of your nose while your hands are full. Argh. That sensation pretty well sums up the gut-wrenching frustration realized while watching this train wreck. There is no breath of fresh air with regard to this movie, only the stale miasma of bad ideas poorly realized, putrefying before coming to fruition.