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Overview
Who can be afraid of the wind? Sure, it’s helps create scary ambiance in tons of horror movies – but to have an entire movie dedicated to just it’s spookiness – phppprrrb. (I think I spelled that correctly)
Well, let’s take a look at how the wind is scary. Let’s make it spookier – you’re along on the western plains, not a soul (at least none that you want to see) around you. Alone. And the wind kicks up, ushering forth strangeness.
Grab a shotgun.
What awaits a lone woman on the wide open plains? What does the wind bring forth? Is it demons? Is it horrors unseen.
Is it madness?
What better way to ease into this season with a strong movie directed by Emma Tammi. Watch it. Watch it again. Question the reality around you.
Trailer
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Transcript
00:03:06.95
Stephen Schneider
Okay, so we’ll just get rolling because that’s how we do our wonderful intros with all this precise planning and we’re yeah doing wind at this time. We’re breaking wind on this one.
00:03:17.06
Rhys
Yes. Only this one doesn’t stink as bad.
00:03:20.14
Stephen Schneider
Because we don’t have 4D at home.
00:03:23.28
Rhys
There you
00:03:24.65
Stephen Schneider
ah So this is our first one of season six, all female, no comedy. So second.
00:03:30.77
Rhys
Second. We did raw.
00:03:34.25
Stephen Schneider
Oh, right. Oh, man, we did do Raw, didn’t we?
00:03:37.07
Rhys
Yep.
00:03:37.08
Stephen Schneider
It’s our second one. Dang. Okay.
00:03:39.20
Rhys
Yep.
00:03:39.20
Stephen Schneider
ah So ah the the women are much more serious. We don’t have the comedy ones.
00:03:45.12
Rhys
In general, yeah. And of course, just after I say that, I start doing more information on people and find out that that’s not necessarily the case.
00:03:55.61
Rhys
But at least for the ones…
00:03:57.11
Stephen Schneider
Well, you know, I guess for some warped individuals, Raw could be a comedy, too.
00:04:01.97
Rhys
And it’s it’s true. um The director of that saw it as kind of a dark coming-of-age comedy, which you know is a little frightening, but hey, they’re French.
00:04:13.62
Stephen Schneider
you
00:04:15.10
Rhys
so
00:04:15.24
Stephen Schneider
Hey, you know, you’re watching a movie. He has some snacks. These are great brownies. I had a couple extra and that movie was hilarious.
00:04:22.18
Rhys
Yeah. um This is ah The Wind. It is an American film from 2019, and it was
00:04:30.27
Stephen Schneider
And it was streaming only, right?
00:04:33.13
Rhys
I think it came out and did some shows. So it’s a worldwide box office was 131 K, but it wasn’t a theatrical release.
00:04:37.78
Stephen Schneider
Okay.
00:04:44.28
Rhys
No.
00:04:45.26
Stephen Schneider
Got it. Okay. okay
00:04:46.99
Rhys
um It was directed by Emma, Emma Tammy. And um she’s a younger director. She was born in 82 Connecticut.
00:04:58.99
Rhys
um And she’s directed six pieces, um including two episodes of Into the Dark, um the show.
00:05:11.26
Rhys
And here’s where the pseudo-comedy comes in, Five Nights at Freddy’s.
00:05:15.80
Stephen Schneider
She directed that the first one.
00:05:16.86
Rhys
She directed the FNAF film, and she has three more upcoming projects, including two Five Nights at Freddy’s and a film called
00:05:23.79
Stephen Schneider
Interesting.
00:05:26.44
Rhys
uh, dollhouse, which I don’t think is a horror, although it sounds like it might be, I think it’s more about fashion.
00:05:32.74
Stephen Schneider
Okay. Cause there was a Joe Hill comic book horror series called dollhouse.
00:05:39.31
Rhys
yeah. Not, not this. Um, there’s not a whole lot out there on her. I watched a few interviews with her and, uh, Caitlin Gerrard, who, um, is the main actress in this, but this film, uh,
00:05:56.00
Rhys
kind of, I imagine, clicks on multiple niche cylinders for us. It should click for Steve because it’s a whole, is this actually happening or is someone going crazy, which Steve loves.
00:06:08.55
Stephen Schneider
Right. Yeah. And they definitely held that up throughout, even at the very, just when at the end you think, oh, it’s really not. Oh yeah, it still is. Okay.
00:06:18.58
Rhys
Yeah. And um for me, it has a ridiculously obscure reference to an earlier episode of ours. so And I love it when that happens.
00:06:27.11
Stephen Schneider
Okay.
00:06:28.63
Rhys
um This was written by Teresa Sutherland. She um has written, there’s a movie out there called Lovely Dark and Deep. I don’t know if you’ve seen that.
00:06:39.82
Rhys
It’s a little bit of a bizarre wilderness survival slash aliens, maybe kind of thing.
00:06:47.90
Stephen Schneider
okay
00:06:48.14
Rhys
um It’s pretty good, but she also wrote Midnight Mass.
00:06:52.18
Stephen Schneider
Oh yeah, i saw that because I looked her up. I wanted to see if she was related to the Sutherlands in any way.
00:06:58.27
Rhys
Donald and Kiefer.
00:06:59.21
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. yeah
00:07:00.69
Rhys
Yeah, Midnight Mass I thought was pretty good until suddenly I realized it was a vampire story. And then I’m like, yeah, okay, never mind.
00:07:07.65
Stephen Schneider
It’s still good. Did you watch Abigail yet? I think Abigail is one of the better vampire from the last couple of years.
00:07:14.46
Rhys
So I did watch Abigail and it was okay. The thing that… I don’t want to say I didn’t like about it because that’s not really the case. There are a handful of, Hey, we kidnapped this person and it’s the wrong person to have kidnapped.
00:07:33.43
Rhys
um And um it kind of a subgenre of like five, but I think the, the aggressiveness of in Abigail, as opposed to just the ridiculous creepitude,
00:07:36.20
Stephen Schneider
Now there’s a subgenre. ah
00:07:43.61
Stephen Schneider
Not qualified.
00:07:52.92
Rhys
of some of the other ones where it’s a possessed child or is the son of the devil kind of thing. and Abigail, she’s just like, yeah I’m going to eat your liver and, you know, shit out your spleen.
00:08:04.72
Rhys
And it’s like, okay, that was a little much for me, but yeah.
00:08:08.67
Stephen Schneider
Got it.
00:08:09.69
Rhys
But other than that,
00:08:10.90
Stephen Schneider
Well, AMC interview of the vampire series season three is Lestat as a rock star. So that looks interesting. Well, I mean, that’s what Anne Rice wrote in the second or third book.
00:08:23.07
Stephen Schneider
So they’re following that.
00:08:25.11
Rhys
But they’re sticking to the literature.
00:08:25.20
Stephen Schneider
So.
00:08:26.96
Rhys
I can’t really fault them.
00:08:27.60
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:08:28.45
Rhys
um I was never a fan of the Anne Rice vampires.
00:08:28.84
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:08:31.37
Stephen Schneider
Right. Right. Right. But I mean, I already saw rock of ages, so I guess it’s kind of the same thing to see Lestat as a rock and roller.
00:08:39.78
Rhys
Yeah. Or what was that one we did in season one? Suck.
00:08:45.51
Stephen Schneider
Suck. Yeah, that was a good one.
00:08:46.32
Rhys
Yeah. So here’s our tie in. This. movie is based loosely on a novel by Dorothy Scarborough from 1925 called The Wind.
00:09:00.51
Stephen Schneider
Crazy.
00:09:02.65
Rhys
That film was developed. I mean, that book was developed into a film in 1928. So there’s a silent film out there called The Wind.
00:09:16.91
Rhys
It is, it stars Lillian Gish, who is, like big name star in the silent movie era. Um, and it is directed by none other than victim Victor so Schulstrom, who directed the, um, phantom carriage.
00:09:34.06
Stephen Schneider
Oh, wow. Lots of little callbacks. And now we really have to look for that public domain to win or the silent film to win.
00:09:36.24
Rhys
Isn’t that crazy?
00:09:39.93
Rhys
Yeah, it is in public domain.
00:09:42.07
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:09:42.24
Rhys
Um,
00:09:42.35
Stephen Schneider
We’ll, we’ll add it. We’ll do a double.
00:09:45.59
Rhys
this one, ah this version took it in a supernatural bent. Um, and the original novel and Schulstrom’s version back in 1928 was much more of a psychological film.
00:10:02.88
Stephen Schneider
Well, yeah, I mean, this this had enough psychological at times.
00:10:03.01
Rhys
Tammy. Yeah.
00:10:07.48
Stephen Schneider
ah So I could definitely see that. So that would that would be cool. Let’s review that one, too, because it’s comparing 100 years ago to now and how the my movie tastes have changed to view the same story ah differently.
00:10:22.36
Stephen Schneider
And then what we think about it.
00:10:24.41
Rhys
And it’s interesting to me because when you listen to us review the Phantom Carriage, we say this movie is over a hundred years old. If you want to do a remake, remake this. Well, here somebody did with something that’s almost a hundred years old.
00:10:34.29
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:10:37.89
Stephen Schneider
It must have been a time traveler that hurt us and went back in time. I’m sure.
00:10:41.76
Rhys
That’s exactly it. And went to Victor Schulstrom and said, Hey, you should make this silent film.
00:10:45.76
Stephen Schneider
We’ll branch off in the sci-fi horror.
00:10:50.91
Rhys
um When you talk, when, Emma Tammy was asked about, you know, the interviewer was like, there seems to be an underlying feminist theme.
00:11:03.61
Rhys
and And she said it wasn’t anything that she had put into it additionally. But if you look at women at the time, their existence alone was a feminist statement because frequently they were left alone.
00:11:22.78
Rhys
They had to fend for themselves, defend themselves on a regular basis. And um to to quote ah a guy who does a YouTube series out there called Today I Found Out, the past was the worst. um And ah it really does it really does come across that way. There is a scene in here Where um the act the star gets thrown up in the air and then falls down on a pair shears.
00:11:56.21
Rhys
Right. And she gets up and she has basically a stab wound. It’s to the far right side. probably missed everything. She’s probably going to be fine. um But I just kept thinking myself in two weeks time, that’s going to kill her because that infection will set in.
00:12:11.39
Stephen Schneider
Right. Yeah.
00:12:14.16
Rhys
And, and you know, that is definitely what’s going to end up taking her out. So.
00:12:19.92
Stephen Schneider
And so without us, uh, you know, canceling subscriptions or anything, um, The the saying saying, well, it seems like has a feminist theme. but That’s, I think, part of our problem. Why do we have to say it has a feminist theme?
00:12:34.77
Stephen Schneider
We don’t say, hey, this is a male theme. You know, i mean, it’s not a male ah dominated story. We just think of that as stories. And and the same with this. Well, the reason it’s this horror story it is, is because it was a woman stuck out on the planes all by herself so much.
00:12:54.02
Stephen Schneider
not because they were trying to make a feminist statement, you know, but can it come across like that? It might. Yes, but I don’t think that’s what it was intended.
00:13:03.40
Rhys
Well, it was written by a female author in the early 20th century. So maybe, maybe it was, but you know, that being said, if you’re again, if you’re going to talk about a woman who’s out in the vast expanse of, well, it was shot in New Mexico, but it was supposed to be like Kansas or something like that.
00:13:07.62
Stephen Schneider
it Maybe. be Yeah, maybe a bit.
00:13:22.51
Stephen Schneider
Right. It’s close.
00:13:24.33
Rhys
Yeah. She’s, you’ve got no choice unless she’s going to sit around and just wait for people to rescue her all the time. You know, it is, this is a person trying to survive. Yeah.
00:13:36.24
Rhys
Right. Yeah.
00:13:37.70
Stephen Schneider
and And that’s actually what draws you into the movie. And I even made the comments like, wow, they do a damn good job showing how desolate and secluded these people really are.
00:13:49.68
Stephen Schneider
You know, hey, we’ve got 140 acres and we’re set up right in the middle. So nobody’s around.
00:13:54.82
Rhys
Yeah. ah There’s that line Emma has where she’s like, um oh, is there a church? And Lizzie’s like, well, there aren’t enough people yet. And she’s like, how many people are there? And she turns her and says, four.
00:14:09.94
Rhys
Because it’s the two of them and their two neighbors.
00:14:11.26
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:14:12.95
Rhys
That’s all.
00:14:13.20
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:14:14.40
Rhys
Yeah. um
00:14:15.94
Stephen Schneider
Well, didn’t you know didn’t they say, you know, however many of you gather in my name? yet There you go.
00:14:20.07
Rhys
that
00:14:20.22
Stephen Schneider
You guys are very true.
00:14:21.30
Rhys
There you go. The other thing that… um I really like about this and I don’t know that it was ah an intentional thing, but we’ve talked about if you pay close attention to foreign films, how like their cultural aspects that they use in their films kind of seep into your blood a bit.
00:14:43.44
Rhys
And I really wonder if Emma Tammy was a big fan of, um, films from Asia because her use of time in this felt very, very Japanese.
00:14:59.06
Stephen Schneider
Yes, it got a little confusing occasionally. trying to but Wait, wait, wait, what timeline are we on right now? It took me a moment to realize we were even switching timelines. ah But yeah, I could see that Japanese influence from that.
00:15:13.26
Rhys
ah i was listening to an interview and the interviewer was like, Hey, you know, a lot of times and Western audiences, when they do this, they’ll tone the film differently, you know, for a flashback or something like that.
00:15:26.23
Rhys
Had you considered that? and she’s like, yeah, we did. They thought that was too heavy handed, which kudos to them. um They thought it was too heavy handed. So what they did was they changed her hair.
00:15:39.84
Rhys
So Lizzie’s hairstyle is different depending on what period, which timeline we’re actually dealing in.
00:15:46.99
Stephen Schneider
And that makes sense because there were a couple times I had to go, hold on. There’s only two women in this I’m confusing them now right now. Who’s who? ah You know, they were dressed similarly. they They a little bit similar in the face and hair and all that. So that could be why I got confused.
00:16:02.29
Stephen Schneider
ah That makes sense.
00:16:03.53
Rhys
Yeah. And well after I heard that, I watched it for my last review where I’m actually taking notes during the movie. I’m like, oh, yeah, I see. It’s like super obvious. Then you’re like, OK. Yeah. So she’s doing this. and But if you didn’t go into it knowing that, you would really have to.
00:16:21.10
Rhys
you would really have to pick it up. And I know, you know, we watch these movies several times, but this is definitely one of those movies where after you watch it, you should just sit down and watch it a second time.
00:16:34.56
Stephen Schneider
I got that feeling too. I definitely was like, okay, now that I saw the ending, let’s see if I look at it differently again. Yes.
00:16:42.26
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. So the film has a really small cast. Um,
00:16:50.41
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. And if you count that the house, it almost doubles the cast.
00:16:53.77
Rhys
yeah um i’ I think I covered everybody except there was one other person that was listed, and I didn’t even remember them being in the film. so But i I took notes on everybody who was in there.
00:17:09.83
Rhys
And we’ll start with Caitlin Gerard. ah She plays Lizzie. She does a great job playing Lizzie. She was born in L.A., studied at UCLA, and she’s fluent in English, French, and German.
00:17:24.69
Rhys
which came out handy for this film.
00:17:24.95
Stephen Schneider
wow
00:17:29.38
Rhys
um She’s been involved in 29 different projects. The ones that we might know, she was in the social network. um She was in the awakening. She was in magic. Mike um smiley ah insidious. The last key and magic. Mike’s last dance.
00:17:49.97
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. i You know, I really shouldn’t have turned down that stunt double roll for magic Mike.
00:17:54.32
Rhys
Yeah. You know, you, you’d probably just be so much better financially right now, but yeah.
00:17:55.19
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:17:59.18
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. It’d be great.
00:18:01.16
Rhys
know Um, but her and magic Mike and magic Mike class dance is a recurring character. So it’s not like she just was in both of them. Uh, Julia Goldani plays Emma.
00:18:17.87
Rhys
She was born, um, on my birthday in 1995.
00:18:22.53
Stephen Schneider
yeah ah the year i got married.
00:18:26.75
Rhys
yeah Yeah, there you go. um Her mother’s Brazilian and her father was a Mexican-American. ah So she is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, and English.
00:18:37.78
Stephen Schneider
Cool.
00:18:38.74
Rhys
ah She started ballet when she was five and was really, really into it. But she had an injury when she was 16 and she was sidelined. And because she…
00:18:48.72
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, those 14 theories.
00:18:51.75
Rhys
Well, she was…
00:18:52.30
Stephen Schneider
Ballet is tough.
00:18:53.53
Rhys
Yeah, she was going crazy not being able to dance. So she decided to just audition for acting. You know, just started auditioning for stuff just as something to do while she healed.
00:19:05.36
Rhys
um And yeah, the very first thing she auditioned for, she got the gig.
00:19:06.66
Stephen Schneider
Well, one door closes. Wow.
00:19:12.00
Rhys
So um she’s been involved in 18 titles, starting with her first acting gig, which was a long run on ah television show called Bunhead’s. but i
00:19:23.30
Stephen Schneider
okay
00:19:24.54
Rhys
um She had a longer run on a series called The Affair. And movie-wise, she’s been involved in Slenderman um and Beacon, which I don’t know that I’ve seen it, but…
00:19:37.17
Stephen Schneider
Oh, I think that’s a Hugh Howey based AMC or Apple Plus show.
00:19:45.55
Rhys
There you go. um Ashley Zuckerman plays Isaac. He was born in Santa Monica, but he grew up in Melbourne, Australia. His father is Israeli and his mother is from Peru.
00:20:01.11
Stephen Schneider
Wow, we have a real big mix from all over on this one.
00:20:05.12
Rhys
Yeah.
00:20:05.28
Stephen Schneider
And it’s funny because they’re they’re playing, ah you know, settlers in the Old West.
00:20:10.75
Rhys
Right. um He’s been involved in 39 projects, including a long television series called Rush. He was on a 23 episode run on a show called Manhattan.
00:20:22.08
Rhys
He had decent size runs on a show called the code and designated survivor.
00:20:28.48
Stephen Schneider
That was a good show.
00:20:29.86
Rhys
oh yeah.
00:20:30.75
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, it was Kiefer Sutherland. It was about the one guy that when Congress or whatever, everybody meets, they put the one guy miles away. so if everyone dies and then everyone died.
00:20:39.50
Rhys
In a box. Yeah.
00:20:42.94
Rhys
Yeah. Well, i I noted that he was in it just because his face is like the poster for the thing.
00:20:48.66
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:49.97
Rhys
Yeah.
00:20:50.12
Stephen Schneider
yeah I mean, it’s kind of the same thing as King Ralph, just without as much comedy.
00:20:56.20
Rhys
ah He also was in 10 episodes of The Lost Symbol and 12 of Succession. So ah he was also in all three of the Fear Street films on Netflix.
00:21:09.58
Stephen Schneider
which aren’t bad. i enjoyed them.
00:21:11.19
Rhys
No, they’re not bad for what they are.
00:21:13.12
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. It’s a casual afternoon, especially if you got young teenage kids or something.
00:21:17.37
Rhys
Yeah, right. Dylan McTee plays Gideon. He was also born in Santa Monica. a lot of these people are coming from California. ah He graduated from USC.
00:21:28.96
Stephen Schneider
But weren’t they heading to California in the movie? I mean, that was…
00:21:33.71
Rhys
He graduated from USC and he’s been involved in 18 titles with decent runs on Sweet Vicious and Roswell, New Mexico.
00:21:41.72
Stephen Schneider
no
00:21:43.10
Rhys
He was also in Wrong Turn and The Other. And he has three upcoming projects, something called coconut plus pistol, um, the club and river of grass.
00:22:00.81
Stephen Schneider
got
00:22:02.14
Rhys
Uh, the last person we’re going to talk about is miles Anderson. ah he plays the reverend.
00:22:08.42
Rhys
he was born in road, Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe. Um, his son, Joe is also an actor. Um, and Joe Anderson, um, we’ve, ah well, I’ve come across him. He was in Christopher Smith’s, uh, creep.
00:22:27.42
Rhys
Uh, he was in the ruins.
00:22:27.42
Stephen Schneider
Okay.
00:22:28.78
Rhys
He was in the crazies. He was in horns and the reckoning.
00:22:33.55
Stephen Schneider
Oh.
00:22:34.13
Rhys
So, I mean, he’s got kind of a horror pedigree right there.
00:22:38.29
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, he’s a scream queen.
00:22:40.82
Rhys
Yeah. Miles, on the other hand, ah a Shakespearean actor.
00:22:41.73
Stephen Schneider
Wow.
00:22:45.56
Rhys
Like he was acting with the, what do they call it in England? The national Shakespearean whatever group.
00:22:54.78
Stephen Schneider
Wow.
00:22:55.68
Rhys
um He’s been involved in a hundred ti titles, starting with a single episode of a TV show called Barrel’s Lot in 1973.
00:23:05.04
Stephen Schneider
wow
00:23:06.73
Rhys
He has long runs on the series, Holbead City, Doctors, and ultimately Ultimate Force. Lots of movies. Um, La La Land is probably the one that you and I are going to recognize.
00:23:22.98
Rhys
He’s got two upcoming projects called we are doing good and dead of night.
00:23:30.18
Rhys
So that is the cast. And literally that is the cast again.
00:23:35.75
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, the all the only other people were the two guys that were loading up the cart after what’s-her-name died. that you know And they they were only seen from a distance.
00:23:47.00
Stephen Schneider
Because I saw that in the credits.
00:23:47.04
Rhys
That must have been.
00:23:49.63
Stephen Schneider
I’m like, who the hell is this?
00:23:51.61
Rhys
yeah
00:23:54.42
Rhys
So.
00:23:57.27
Rhys
Now we’ll talk about the movie.
00:23:59.20
Stephen Schneider
Let’s talk about the movie. Click. So before we we delve into it, I’ll say one thing. ah General overall, we talk a lot about building suspense and what frightens people and what’s considered horror and all that.
00:24:12.78
Stephen Schneider
And one of the things I realized they did in this movie that totally makes it a good horror movie as opposed to like a blockbuster, because, you know, we we tend to think the blockbusters aren’t as horrific, ah you know, pretty much, um is that they…
00:24:25.74
Rhys
Yeah.
00:24:29.24
Stephen Schneider
Don’t go into town. They don’t have people visiting. it’s Basically, the camera is set up in or ah on the outside of the cabin, and that’s all you get. It’s almost stationary in many ways.
00:24:41.73
Rhys
yeah
00:24:42.12
Stephen Schneider
And that builds it because it gives you that sense of isolation just in the movie without even realizing it. the The shots you get outside build that like when it’s dark and she’s going to the other cabin and you know just see her walking and it’s like, oh, my God, I’d be scared to death doing this for a mile.
00:25:00.40
Stephen Schneider
So i kudos to the choices there because it could have been a totally different movie traveling into town, having people going by, you know
00:25:00.61
Rhys
the
00:25:09.13
Rhys
And that that specific scene, I’m like, what in the hell is she thinking? Yeah.
00:25:15.28
Stephen Schneider
Demons or not, there’s not some good stuff on the planes.
00:25:16.81
Rhys
Yeah.
00:25:19.08
Stephen Schneider
Just take rattlesnakes and scorpions and crap, you know?
00:25:22.63
Rhys
Yeah. One of the biggest criticisms, and I can see this, ah but i I don’t know that I, I think it would have been too realistic.
00:25:33.45
Rhys
One of the biggest criticisms is that the cabins were far too nice for homesteaders.
00:25:39.88
Stephen Schneider
but Well, they did have a lot of holes, I noticed. I was like, holy crap, that thing’s going be freezing in the winter when the wind’s blowing through.
00:25:48.34
Rhys
But glass windows, pane glass windows, boards, you know like smoothed over hardwood boards, yeah, that kind of stuff.
00:25:49.93
Stephen Schneider
oh yeah.
00:25:54.54
Stephen Schneider
ah Nicely. Right. Yeah.
00:25:57.99
Rhys
it I don’t know that I necessarily think that you know they should have made it more rustic per se. but That’s just…
00:26:05.13
Stephen Schneider
sometimes, and I know people disagree with this, but sometimes ah doing some of those, it’s so ultra realistic becomes distracting because the general audience, that’s not what they’re expecting.
00:26:17.54
Stephen Schneider
So they’re distracted by the way things look. It’s like, well, that is that right? That doesn’t look right. That seems weird. And it turns them off, pulls them out of it. You know, i i can see that choice at times, unless they just said, well, this is all we can afford, which is a whole nother reason to do it.
00:26:32.83
Stephen Schneider
um
00:26:33.23
Rhys
Yeah.
00:26:33.32
Stephen Schneider
But, you know, I can understand sometimes when they do things like this.
00:26:37.80
Rhys
So what I’m going to do is I’m going to give a rough layout of this movie chronologically, and then we’ll go into it.
00:26:45.63
Stephen Schneider
Okay. Right.
00:26:49.61
Rhys
So from a chronological standpoint, this film takes place in probably the mid 19th century. ah You have a couple who have moved out to homestead out in the wilderness of the plains. Yeah.
00:27:03.57
Rhys
So the actual chronological thing starts with them traveling out there. And then they’re already there. They’re settled. They’re having a baby.
00:27:18.20
Rhys
Then neighbors move in next door.
00:27:22.58
Stephen Schneider
Next door is a mile away.
00:27:24.27
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah.
00:27:27.32
Rhys
And then, um her husband, And the neighbor leave and she’s alone for an extended period of time until the end of the movie.
00:27:41.95
Rhys
So those are the five different, you know, timelines that we’re dealing with, but they bounce everywhere. So we’re going to start in like part four.
00:27:55.38
Rhys
That’s where the movie starts.
00:27:56.93
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, it definitely has that cliffhanger opening to get you hooked.
00:27:57.95
Rhys
Yeah.
00:28:01.97
Rhys
Yeah. Um, this is an IFC midnight film. So again, i i I preferred IFC as ah tag IFC midnight films on occasions tend to be a little hokey, sometimes a little too yeah standard flavored horror films as opposed to like playing IFC films, but
00:28:26.77
Stephen Schneider
ah Oh yeah. Bland almost just nothing that makes them stand out. I agree. You get some good standouts, but you get a lot of like, uh, yeah. Okay. but
00:28:38.14
Rhys
This one was great. So, you know, it doesn’t apply at all.
00:28:39.36
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:28:41.15
Rhys
And IFC, you know, congrats on distributing great movies, but there is an absolute silent opening to this film. And when it started again, i had to check to make sure that there was audio in the movie I was watching.
00:28:57.53
Stephen Schneider
Yes, I made the same comment. I’m like, wow, there’s like 10 to 15 minutes without a single word being spoken and hardly any sounds. It’s all just silent. And that was, again, very effective.
00:29:07.87
Rhys
Yep.
00:29:09.80
Stephen Schneider
It felt very, you almost hear the wind howling.
00:29:13.43
Rhys
Yeah. Um, and when you go, you know, way back to the nineteen twenty s when Dorothy Scarborough wrote this, I mean, that was like, that was the theme for her was that the wind was relentless and it would just blow constantly.
00:29:29.53
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:29:31.38
Rhys
And that is what would make people go, go crazy.
00:29:35.24
Stephen Schneider
and I don’t blame them.
00:29:36.65
Rhys
Yeah. Um, So you have two men standing outside a cabin, just looking at the door in the dark, which seems creepy enough as it is.
00:29:49.66
Rhys
um you can hear something moving inside. Other than that, it’s completely silent. The door opens, a woman comes out. She’s completely drenched in blood and she’s holding what appears to be a silent baby.
00:30:05.35
Rhys
So there’s so many aspects here that could be considered horrendous.
00:30:08.98
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
00:30:09.71
Rhys
um you have a closeup of Lizzie holding um this child. Her hands are stained in blood. The man standing on the left is Gideon, the father of this baby. He takes the baby. He walks out of frame. um And then you have this thing with Isaac. Isaac and Lizzie are married, but there’s very little in the way of intimacy between them.
00:30:36.38
Rhys
Like if my wife had gone through something like that, I would have gone up and like held her or something like that. Isaac just stands there looking at her as you hear off screen, Gideon screaming in the distance.
00:30:45.85
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:30:51.85
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. and Which again, adds to that horrificness, you know, it hits that, especially for a woman hits that emotional thing. It’s like, Oh my God, are you just ignoring her? And you know, how, how distraught is she?
00:31:04.34
Stephen Schneider
You know, what’s going on?
00:31:05.60
Rhys
Yeah. And it’s, you know, the most dangerous thing women voluntarily do. having children. um but you know, by the end of this scene, it’s safe to say one, the mother’s dead and two, the baby is too.
00:31:22.56
Rhys
So everything seemed to have gone sideways,
00:31:26.30
Stephen Schneider
To say the least.
00:31:28.02
Rhys
but you get a black screen, a title card, the wind followed by these dissonant violins. Um,
00:31:37.69
Rhys
So for the first three and a half minutes of this film, there was nothing but the wind for soundtrack for any audio until Gideon yells and then the violins come in.
00:31:45.92
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:31:49.35
Stephen Schneider
It’s definite goth metal soundtrack.
00:31:52.42
Rhys
Yes. And, and so here we are in the middle of timeline four, we’re going to continue in timeline four because the next thing you have is Lizzie in the tub.
00:32:04.42
Rhys
Isaac comes in. um There’s a focus on the fact that there’s double barreled flintlock rifle.
00:32:11.70
Stephen Schneider
checkoff I think it belonged to Chekhov.
00:32:13.45
Rhys
Yes. um And we continue in timeline four because now you have Lizzie standing over a hole in the ground. um There’s a coffin in it and Emma is lying there.
00:32:24.77
Stephen Schneider
it And with with the gun, it they the way they focused on it, the way they filmed that…
00:32:29.32
Rhys
Yeah.
00:32:33.89
Stephen Schneider
yeah you were, I was, I was questioning. it’s like, what was he considering to do with that gun? And then she’s looking at and I’m like, what is she thinking of doing with that gun? And the gun’s sitting there, and it’s like, wow, somebody’s really going to do something with that gun.
00:32:49.36
Rhys
Well, and that’s funny because the gun virtually becomes a character in this.
00:32:53.60
Stephen Schneider
Yeah,
00:32:54.21
Rhys
The gun is the only companion she has through three of the four timelines.
00:32:54.43
Stephen Schneider
yeah.
00:33:02.44
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:33:03.41
Rhys
um The only stable companion who’s not like missing somewhere or insane.
00:33:10.89
Stephen Schneider
the only companion that we’re absolutely sure is really there.
00:33:14.90
Rhys
Yes, for sure. For sure. um So Emma’s in Emma’s lying in this box dead. ah This is our introduction to her.
00:33:26.90
Stephen Schneider
And that was a pretty horrific looking, I mean, you know, probably a small budget here, but ah that they did a really good job on that one.
00:33:29.05
Rhys
Yes.
00:33:35.48
Rhys
and Gideon places the baby in the box too. So now we know for sure that, you know, what has happened and then.
00:33:43.61
Stephen Schneider
And we had we had heard a gunshot when he took the baby off. So it was never clear was he shooting himself or someone else. And then we see her with half her head gone. So so my thought was, oh, he killed her. but wait, where was she? How did he kill her?
00:34:01.19
Stephen Schneider
So again, it left it very ambiguous. Again, difference between ah what we like in horror and what makes popcorn blockbusters.
00:34:09.03
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is not the conjuring here.
00:34:12.11
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:34:13.57
Rhys
Um, so we’re back at the barn. Isaac and Gideon are on horses. Gideon plans to move back to Illinois. Um, Lizzie says Emma had her gun and how did she, Isaac, how did she get my gun?
00:34:31.12
Rhys
Um, Isaac seems as detached as he is throughout pretty much the whole freaking movie. ah He tells Lizzie to keep her wits about her and a trip to town. He’s going to buy supplies while he’s in there.
00:34:44.75
Rhys
It’ll take a couple days.
00:34:47.11
Stephen Schneider
Think about that, folks. You’re complaining about the half hour drive to and back to the store.
00:34:50.28
Rhys
Yeah. To get groceries.
00:34:52.09
Stephen Schneider
couple days.
00:34:53.12
Rhys
Yeah.
00:34:53.42
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:34:57.24
Rhys
So staying in this timeline for, she goes into this empty cabin. um There’s a table covered with blood and viscera, and there’s a slight flashback to the night before that starts to explain things.
00:35:14.16
Rhys
Gideon and Isaac bring in Emma’s body and tell Lizzie they need to get the baby out. um And so now we’re ping ponging back and forth between the present and that night.
00:35:25.29
Rhys
Um, Lizzie’s trying to clean up it. I was just thinking doing laundry back then, just even that would suck. You know, you’re not putting it in your washing machine.
00:35:32.97
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:35:35.35
Rhys
You’re going outside with a giant tub of water, some lie and like a washboard. That’s going to rip your knuckles apart.
00:35:43.23
Stephen Schneider
Right. And um but the the only good point is you only got two or three outfits total. so
00:35:51.13
Rhys
Yeah, that’s true. You don’t have that much to wash except the blood off of it.
00:35:55.19
Stephen Schneider
True. Which sucks no matter what.
00:35:56.36
Rhys
Uh, yeah. Uh, she’s still trying to clean up. There’s these beautiful vistas, the outdoors clothes on the line. i love how the support that holds up the clothes is across, you know?
00:36:09.96
Stephen Schneider
Yes. Yeah.
00:36:12.10
Rhys
Um, and then she’s sitting there doing laundry and there are wolves out of nowhere and not like,
00:36:24.19
Rhys
I had this conversation with people out here, like they’re a coyote around and they’re very, very flighty creatures, right?
00:36:31.00
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:36:31.80
Rhys
So, you know, they’re not, if you stumble across them while you’re doing your laundry, they’re going to run away. These wolves are not,
00:36:40.62
Stephen Schneider
And this whole scene, again, scary people, you know, we’re using wolves. We’re not using hamsters ah because wolves in our culture are a scary thing, which is incorrect.
00:36:52.81
Stephen Schneider
um So the the first question was, wait a minute, where the hell these wolves come from? ah they they like said And then later, um spoilers, are these really wolves?
00:37:02.52
Rhys
Thank you.
00:37:04.55
Stephen Schneider
There’s something else. But the thing that I’m like, damn it, this is not what wolves will do unless they’re injured or like rabbit or something. They’re not going to come up to a house and attack the lady outside. They’re going to see it and go away. They’re going to go somewhere else for the most part.
00:37:22.59
Stephen Schneider
As a pack, maybe they would try and hunt. i only saw two, but they were just growling and trying to attack her. I was like, yeah, I don’t know. I understand making it scary.
00:37:33.80
Rhys
Yes. So we’re going to lump in that there’s a supernatural element to the wolves for now.
00:37:38.97
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, they will that makes sense.
00:37:41.95
Rhys
So the wolves were actually one was a full bred wolf. The other was a half breed on set. And apparently they’re really, really friendly. So like she would run away and they’d chase after her and knock her down and lick her face and stuff like that.
00:37:53.38
Stephen Schneider
liquor
00:37:54.76
Rhys
Yeah.
00:37:55.67
Stephen Schneider
I can testify. That’s how wolves really act. People don’t realize that they’re not these vicious hunters, like the big bad wolf or anything as one of my personal pet peeves.
00:38:06.12
Rhys
Well, mankind has always had kind of a leery relationship with them. um But a lot of the stories that we have about them come from ancient European times when there were wolves in Europe, which is really not a thing anymore.
00:38:22.05
Stephen Schneider
Right. Right.
00:38:24.98
Rhys
And and the radical difference between
00:38:30.31
Rhys
where you’re at over long periods of time can radically change behavior. So wolves in North America lived with a small indigenous population, ah kind of in harmony to the point where, like, you didn’t have massive cities where food was scarce.
00:38:36.08
Stephen Schneider
True.
00:38:48.38
Rhys
And in Europe, you did. You had densely populated areas where food would be very scarce. And so the wolves might just have nowhere, nothing else to eat. And so that might be why we as European, of European descent, are terrified of wolves.
00:39:04.56
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, could be. um But again except for the supernatural element, ah this is not how wolves would typically act.
00:39:14.22
Rhys
So I was thinking about that too. She has livestock.
00:39:18.61
Stephen Schneider
Yes. And those goats get scary too.
00:39:22.67
Rhys
She has livestock and there were only two wolves, which made me wonder if perhaps it was a small, like a decimated pack, in which case they’re going to look for easy prey because it’d be a lot easier to chew on some woman than try and take down a bison if there’s only two of you.
00:39:30.44
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.
00:39:39.92
Stephen Schneider
True, ah but they might have tried for the goats first anyway.
00:39:41.04
Rhys
But
00:39:43.68
Stephen Schneider
but
00:39:43.86
Rhys
Oh yeah. Yeah. So here we are.
00:39:45.51
Stephen Schneider
I still think it was the supernatural element.
00:39:48.70
Rhys
Yes.
00:39:48.71
Stephen Schneider
That’s why they acted this way. Well, I mean, obviously, because once she ran into the house, they would not continue batting their heads against the wall to break in. So there’s something wrong with these wolves.
00:39:57.35
Rhys
Yes. She runs. She runs and gets in the house. She closes the door. ah they don’t really have a latch on the door. They have a chain. And so she chains the door shut and the wolves are beating against it.
00:40:10.41
Rhys
ah She smacks one in the nose with a giant spoon, which as Steve’s pointing out, in all honesty, wild wolves would just leave it alone after that because it’s not worth getting hurt over.
00:40:19.63
Stephen Schneider
right But it did have a couple good jump scares in there.
00:40:23.71
Rhys
Yes. Yeah. um So she gets her gun. And she cocks it and fires. And it’s important to note that it’s as it’s a smooth bore ah flintlock. It’s not a shotgun.
00:40:37.60
Rhys
If it had been a shotgun, it might have done more damage to the wolves, but it certainly would have done a big hole in the door. So…
00:40:44.94
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:40:45.29
Rhys
so
00:40:47.71
Stephen Schneider
And it knocks her down. I love it. It’s like police when she flies halfway across the cabin.
00:40:53.46
Rhys
But she is so adept at using it that she is reloading it as the wolves are attacking. And then this is where the supernatural part comes in because you get the shadow of the wolf on the other side of the door and suddenly it grows to be about five feet tall, which wolves are very big if it’s going to stand up on its hind legs.
00:40:59.88
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:41:08.92
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:41:12.47
Rhys
But wolves don’t slowly rise up on their hind legs. This was like a ah growing, creeping thing.
00:41:18.94
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. And this is not a werewolf movie, folks.
00:41:21.97
Rhys
Right. Um, and then she shoots and now we’re going to jump back to timeline three and timeline three, Gideon and Emma are moving into the next door cabin and Isaac and Lizzie are thrilled, very excited to have neighbors.
00:41:47.32
Rhys
Um, she’s like, did you invite them for dinner? He’s like, of course. And she’s like, I’ve got to go make dinner. Um, and so she’s, they’re all sitting around eating dinner. Gideon is like, this is the most amazing food I’ve had in a very long time.
00:42:02.33
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, he gets a little bit dickish to his wife.
00:42:04.87
Rhys
And then he’s like, you’re going to have to teach Emma how to cook. because she doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing. um Emma does not seem overly happy. She would have been happy to have stayed in Illinois. We find out later.
00:42:16.05
Rhys
Um, and she is out here now. um Isaac points out they have a lot of work to get ready for the winter. ah Gideon’s like, everyone said this was a good time. And Isaac’s like, it is.
00:42:28.63
Rhys
But you still have a lot of work to get ready for the winter.
00:42:30.75
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:42:33.01
Rhys
um But they’re willing to help. Isaac and Lizzie are willing to help. Isaac will bring his plow over the next day and till up the soil. And so we cut to Lizzie and Emma back there washing dishes.
00:42:49.43
Rhys
Uh, and there’s a little discourse that happens here. Just a little bit of information, you know, background information. We found out Lizzie was originally from Germany.
00:42:59.73
Rhys
Emma thought that the trip was really long. She met a reverend along the way and she asked if there’s a church and this is where Lizzie’s like, there aren’t enough people. And she’s like, how many people here? She’s like, well, now there’s four.
00:43:11.57
Rhys
um and then bam, we’re back to timeline four. in the ah aftermath of the wolf attack, Lizzie comes outside with her gun.
00:43:23.03
Rhys
She finds the paddock gate is open.
00:43:27.36
Rhys
Um, and I don’t know if that’s something that a frontier family could recover from because you, you need all those animals to last at least until winter.
00:43:33.79
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:43:37.70
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:43:37.74
Rhys
Um, but there are, there’s a dead sheep lying on the ground.
00:43:38.19
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:43:43.36
Rhys
um And there’s claw marks on the outside of the door. So something had been there and attacked. So Lizzie goes back to washing her hands, trying to get all of the blood out of her.
00:43:56.80
Rhys
She lays down on her bed. She’s holding her rifle, staring at the ceiling. And now we have a flashback to timeline three.
00:44:06.18
Rhys
ah You have two ladies running through the rain, giggling as they go. um They’re at Lizzie and Isaac’s cabin. Isaac is there tending to the fire. Emma’s like, this furniture is actually really nice. And Lizzie’s like, Oh, Isaac made it all.
00:44:22.25
Rhys
And Emma’s like, Oh, my useless husband, you know, he couldn’t do that. All of ours got from my parents.
00:44:28.39
Stephen Schneider
You’re starting to wonder how they’re going to survive out here anyway.
00:44:31.56
Rhys
Yes. Um, Emma says, do you guys have children? And it turns out that Lizzie and Isaac had a son, but he died. That’s timeline too.
00:44:42.44
Rhys
um It leaves the room. There’s just a little bit of an awkward kind of feeling in the room.
00:44:50.63
Stephen Schneider
How do you follow that up?
00:44:52.47
Rhys
Yes. Well, you followed up with Isaac and Lizzie having sex.
00:44:58.15
Stephen Schneider
There you go.
00:44:59.27
Rhys
And the most impressive part of the scene was the quilt, which was an absolute stunner of a quilt.
00:45:06.44
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. You can tell you’re getting old when you start admiring quilts.
00:45:10.98
Rhys
three inch squares. I mean, that is so much sewing.
00:45:14.29
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. yeah Especially then without the sewing machine and everything. Yeah.
00:45:18.66
Rhys
Yes. um As soon as they’re done, this is what I mean about Isaac being standoffish. As soon as they’re done, Isaac gets up out of bed, walks over, lights up a pipe and stands in the doorway, looking out into the darkness.
00:45:32.46
Rhys
Lizzie comes over and joins them and and she’s looking out across the dark and there’s this little dot of light in the distance. And she’s like, is that what we look like to them? um But it does, it makes you feel super isolated.
00:45:45.50
Rhys
You really get like your closest neighbor is this speck of light off in the distance.
00:45:45.96
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:45:50.27
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:45:52.78
Rhys
And um Lizzie’s like, it’s nice to have people close because that is close. You know, it’s a two day ride to get to the city.
00:45:59.18
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:46:01.95
Rhys
um She’s like, it’s odd because in urban areas, people are completely isolated from each other, but they’re on top of each other. But out here, They’re so far away and yet we’re so close.
00:46:15.85
Rhys
Now we go back to timeline four and Lizzie wakes up from her little nap on the bed, holding her gun, this extra character. um It’s raining outside. um She steps outside and throws up coming back in and she runs over to this bottle of pills. She takes a couple, who knows what they were for.
00:46:35.27
Rhys
it could be salt. It could be sugar. It could be morphine for all we know.
00:46:39.29
Stephen Schneider
I took it along the lines of it was some morphine or Coke or something because it kind of knocks her out.
00:46:45.04
Rhys
Yes. She seems almost feverish as she lies on the floor. Back to timeline three, Isaac and Lizzie go over the day after Gideon and Emma have moved in. He’s brought his plow.
00:46:56.92
Rhys
Lizzie is showing Emma how to pull weeds in the garden and Isaac and Gideon are working on an outhouse. Um, and Emma’s like, we were so comfortable in Illinois, but Gideon wanted to get out from under the shadow of my father.
00:47:09.35
Rhys
and then she just, and this is like, don’t take offense people. This is like the rich kids way out of it. She’s like, I’m going to go get something to drink for all the, for the men while you sit here and pull all the weeds while you do actual work.
00:47:23.70
Stephen Schneider
I took it partly as that, but then the way ah Lizzie’s reacting, the way she’s like ah flirty with like, you have a husband that can survive out here. I’m going flirt with him type thing.
00:47:35.37
Rhys
Yes.
00:47:35.51
Stephen Schneider
It was a little of both of that.
00:47:37.62
Rhys
Yeah. So Emma gets water, takes it over to the men where she ladles it directly into Isaac’s mouth.
00:47:45.36
Stephen Schneider
It’s a bad Harlequin commercial.
00:47:45.39
Rhys
Isaac is not her husband. Yes. And then just gives the, gives the dipper to Gideon to drink himself. ah And Lizzie does not miss that.
00:47:56.41
Rhys
She sees that happen.
00:47:56.93
Stephen Schneider
Oh yeah. So again, this is one aspect you don’t see it quite as often. Is it really happening or is she imagining it?
00:48:07.77
Rhys
And Isaac as a character seems to notice it, but that might be Lizzie thinking Isaac notices it.
00:48:13.31
Stephen Schneider
Right. Right. She’s very unreliable narrator narrator here.
00:48:18.52
Rhys
There is a little note in IMDb and kudos to whoever noticed this. i mean, cause the notes for this are like two, you know what I mean?
00:48:29.24
Rhys
is There’s not a whole lot.
00:48:29.32
Stephen Schneider
right
00:48:31.10
Rhys
ah But there is a scene of like a basket full of clothing here, which he goes to get the water. And the frill on the outside of one of the pieces, articles of clothing forms a skull.
00:48:43.45
Stephen Schneider
Wow. I’m going to have to go look for that now.
00:48:44.01
Rhys
um Super subtle. Yeah. It’s not even like a full skull. It’s just the top half of one, but it’s like, wow. Okay. Yeah. I mean, cause they told you that like the minute and second when it shows up and I was like, okay, yeah.
00:48:55.76
Stephen Schneider
Wow.
00:48:57.05
Rhys
Good eye.
00:48:59.67
Rhys
um still in timeline three. The ladies are leaning on this tree. Emma is doing needle point. And she points out how funny the land is. It always plays these tricks on your mind.
00:49:11.63
Rhys
Emma leans back against the tree and she notes that there’s a plaque on the tree with the letter S on it. They don’t bother explaining what that means.
00:49:23.89
Rhys
They will later, but they don’t do it now.
00:49:28.24
Stephen Schneider
Right. Definitely foreshadowing though.
00:49:31.31
Rhys
Yes. Uh, Back to timeline four, Elizabeth’s back in bed, all wrapped up in her blankets. She heads outside, and the cross-like support that was holding her laundry up is now on the ground.
00:49:46.06
Rhys
little ah a little symbolism there for you.
00:49:49.16
Stephen Schneider
but but Yeah, those wolves were not nice.
00:49:52.11
Rhys
No. She sets it back up and goes about picking up all of her washing off the ground, and she finds the remnant of a small peep lying on the ground, just to let you know that absolutely nothing survived this wolf attack. The paddock is now empty.
00:50:07.92
Rhys
As she walks back to the house, though, she finds the goat standing there looking at her, unharmed, alive.
00:50:21.92
Rhys
And had just been killed by wolves the day before. So she goes out with her gun, comes back out and shoots it.
00:50:29.87
Stephen Schneider
She’s tough, but goats can be really scary like that. Even goats I’ve seen look possessed sometimes when they go. yeah
00:50:38.38
Rhys
Sideways slit eyes.
00:50:39.68
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:50:40.98
Rhys
Well, the thing that I thought was, well, you know, now you’ve shot it, you should properly butcher it and actually use it.
00:50:48.36
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:50:48.91
Rhys
ah But I don’t think she did that.
00:50:49.74
Stephen Schneider
Possessed or not.
00:50:51.32
Rhys
Yeah.
00:50:52.48
Stephen Schneider
I wonder if possessed demon meat tastes good.
00:50:57.28
Rhys
probably a little brimstone-y.
00:50:58.94
Stephen Schneider
Probably.
00:51:00.38
Rhys
We go back to timeline three, flashback to Gideon pounding on Isaac’s door saying, Emma is not well. And they head over there and Lizzie is like, you men just stay out here. You’re just getting my way.
00:51:12.23
Rhys
um She goes inside. So no one else will get sick is what she says. And that’s a legitimate concern at the time she goes inside.
00:51:18.69
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:51:19.49
Rhys
um But it’s not the kind of sickness you’re going to catch because Lizzie is Emma’s just hiding under the bed.
00:51:27.21
Stephen Schneider
Having a good old freak out.
00:51:28.65
Rhys
Yes. She’s s saying the Lord’s Prayer and saying things like, it’s coming for me, and this place is wrong, we’re not supposed to be here, and it wants her baby. And Lizzie’s like, you’re pregnant?
00:51:40.31
Rhys
um And she reaches in to try and pull out from the bed, but Emma recoils and then continues to freak out.
00:51:46.61
Stephen Schneider
And there’s a little bit of feeling of jealousy coming here. And you start to wonder, is Lizzie going do something to take care of the baby or get the baby? You know, i got, that’s the thought I saw in her face.
00:52:00.66
Rhys
Ironically, she goes out to report to the men and ask Gideon if she’s pregnant and Gideon’s like, what she’s what? Um, and she grabs a box from her saddlebag and goes inside with mother’s little helper. She’s got a bottle of ether and a rag.
00:52:16.40
Rhys
Uh, she’s like, you’re just exhausted. And was like, I can’t rest because it’s coming for me. And when Lizzie goes into gas her, she punches Lizzie in the mouth.
00:52:28.02
Rhys
Um, And that was it. Lizzie’s done being nice. She’s just like, shu and then just, yeah, she walks out and she’s like tired of the bed.
00:52:34.61
Stephen Schneider
Yep. She’s a little tougher.
00:52:42.25
Stephen Schneider
That was earlier.
00:52:43.76
Rhys
Yeah. Um,
00:52:48.60
Rhys
so Lizzie was like, life is hard enough when it was just us. Now we have to sit here and care for these two people. Um, Gideon, Gideon should just take her back to Illinois.
00:53:01.10
Rhys
Isaac’s not listening to any of that. He’s like, is she really pregnant? And she’s like, she thinks she is. um yeah we’re going to jump ahead to timeline four again, post death.
00:53:17.23
Rhys
Lizzie heads over to the abandoned cabin. And um you can tell it’s the present era.
00:53:28.82
Rhys
Lizzie has hair in coming down. That’s not tied up everywhere else. It’s very well kept and her hair looks great. I mean, that’s, it’s not like it’s, but there’s like two or three strands that are loose hanging down, kind of framing her face.
00:53:46.48
Rhys
That’s how you can tell when you’re watching this, that this is present day.
00:53:49.65
Stephen Schneider
a more physical manifestation of her deterioration.
00:53:50.50
Rhys
Lizzie
00:53:55.10
Rhys
kind of. Yeah. Um, They go in she goes into the abandoned cabin, Emma and Gideon’s cabin. She pulls out a book which triggers a memory, so we’re flashing back to Timeline 3 again, of her reading Adolfo to Emma.
00:54:12.80
Rhys
um And it was written by Radcliffe. It’s it’s a typical example of 19th century Gothic literature. um and it really was…
00:54:23.44
Rhys
um Radcliffe’s most notable work, honestly. I mean, it’s not like she didn’t write. But female female author of the 19th century, ah the other female author of the 19th century that gets mentioned is Mary Shelley because he quotes frank he’s reading Frankenstein later.
00:54:37.50
Stephen Schneider
Right. Right.
00:54:40.11
Stephen Schneider
right
00:54:41.37
Rhys
um Lizzie’s talking about how the character in the story seems to be haunted by something, and she’s like, oh, you know what? She’s a little crazy, thinks she’s being haunted by something. We’ll finish this later. And Emma’s like, it’s just a character in a story.
00:54:54.73
Rhys
um She’s now visibly pregnant. So this is a little further along than the night before when she punched Lizzie in the mouth.
00:55:01.39
Stephen Schneider
I’m at this point starting to picture Emma as the possessed people from Evil Dead. I mean, just the way she acted and talked, it reminded me of the kids in Evil Dead when they were possessed.
00:55:14.44
Rhys
Yeah, a little bit. I don’t want to say breaking the fourth wall, but almost like interacting with it. It’s just characters in a story.
00:55:23.62
Stephen Schneider
Right, right.
00:55:23.93
Rhys
know Aren’t we all just characters in a story here?
00:55:24.80
Stephen Schneider
All right. Thank you, Shakespeare.
00:55:29.71
Rhys
ah Emma says she’d seen something at night. She hears it whispering. She told Gideon, but of course he doesn’t believe her. He says it’s the wind. um And Emma’s like, it’s nothing natural.
00:55:42.11
Rhys
And then you have this flashback of all the graves they passed along the way and a pamphlet called Demons of the Prairie. And you might think this is a flashback that Emma’s having. No, no.
00:55:53.58
Rhys
because Lizzie noted all of this stuff on her trip out to, she saw all of the graves on the way.
00:55:57.41
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:55:59.63
Rhys
She was giving this pamphlet called demons of the prairie.
00:56:03.78
Stephen Schneider
And that pamphlet, I mean, that one may be made up. I’m not, don’t know, but they did have things like this. It was like tracks that out for a lot of things, you know, printed up and all that. It wasn’t uncommon to give you the information through, you know, what we believe in all that. And I love that it’s ah these demons. And, you know, I was just like, man, I’d love to get ahold of some of those, but I’m sure none exist whatsoever. 200 years later.
00:56:32.36
Rhys
and So you’re probably right, but I was a little disappointed because Demons of the Prairie was written specifically for this movie. And I just kept thinking, how cool would it have been if they had found an actual historical one they could have based off of?
00:56:43.95
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.
00:56:47.45
Rhys
um Emma told Gideon that everybody would be dead by the time they got there. And this rattles Lizzie. She’s like, hush, we’re done having this conversation.
00:56:57.05
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. You don’t speak that stuff. Cause that brings about the the evil. I mean, these people are out on their own and you know, they rely on themselves a lot. So there was a lot of superstition still ah going on.
00:57:08.92
Rhys
Yes.
00:57:09.48
Stephen Schneider
yeah.
00:57:10.61
Rhys
So now we’re back to timeline four. um Lizzie is repairing the door from the scratches of the wolves and staring off in the distance. And she starts to sing in German. And this takes us to flashback of timeline two.
00:57:23.80
Rhys
And in timeline two, we have Lizzie visibly pregnant, sitting in a rocking chair. Someone knocks on the door. She head over to see who it is. And there’s nobody there.
00:57:34.09
Rhys
It’s just the wind blows out her candle. The lantern hanging by the door. She goes back to the rocking chair and she hears someone call her name and more knocking at the door. When she opens it, there’s no one there but the wind.
00:57:47.69
Rhys
And then all of the lights in the cabin go out.
00:57:51.40
Stephen Schneider
it’ so the I mean, it’s called The Wind, but it definitely takes on a physical attribution here in the movie.
00:57:51.59
Rhys
i
00:57:59.01
Rhys
Yes. She goes back in to the dark cabin where all of the lights just suddenly went out.
00:58:06.45
Stephen Schneider
Right. Well, her choice is to go out to the wide open, vast darkness on in the plane.
00:58:10.31
Rhys
It’s true.
00:58:11.81
Stephen Schneider
So…
00:58:12.03
Rhys
It’s true. There’s a shadow of something outdoors on her curtain. She tries to light the fire, but there’s a big downdraft from the chimney and it puts her matches out. She starts to recite Psalm 121.
00:58:25.21
Rhys
My help will come from the Lord. He will not suffer the foot to be moved. And then the fire just burst into life on its own and the door slams open.
00:58:34.51
Stephen Schneider
and And some of these shadows and stuff, ah there’s very, from what I can see, little use of CGI in these, you know, the shadows and stuff. They could have been practical, but they really did look CGI or something. Very minimal amounts, though.
00:58:48.51
Stephen Schneider
So just about everything else is very practical because there isn’t a lot.
00:58:51.18
Rhys
Oh yeah.
00:58:53.17
Stephen Schneider
There’s not like these big transformations and things going on. There’s not like spirits and stuff flying around in that, which, again, i think adds to the whole tension and ah you know, making you feel like, oh my God, what the heck’s going on?
00:59:07.29
Rhys
Yeah. um The day after this happens, Isaac returns home to find Lizzie cowering in a loft, praying in German. um it takes her a minute or two to even realize that he’s up there with her.
00:59:20.99
Rhys
And it’s one of the first times that he actually like treats her tenderly throughout the whole movie. um He finds this Demons of the Prairie flyer, and he chastises her about reading it. He’s like, that’s not going to help. And she insists what she saw was real, and he throws the flyer into the fire.
00:59:41.30
Rhys
Then he introduces that character to her by giving her a gun and saying the next time she thinks she sees a demon, just shoot it.
00:59:49.33
Stephen Schneider
So my thought is, oh, great. She’s going to shoot her husband. You know, that seems like the foreshadowing you would get with something like that.
00:59:57.74
Rhys
So yeah you can look at this movie in multiple ways. One of the ways you can look at it is that people are going crazy, and this could just completely be a psychological thing. The other way you can look at it is that the demon involved in this is really only interested in pregnant women.
01:00:17.23
Stephen Schneider
Oh, yeah, that’s true.
01:00:18.45
Rhys
Because Lizzie has no problem with the demon until she’s pregnant.
01:00:18.88
Stephen Schneider
I see.
01:00:22.41
Rhys
And after she’s pregnant, she doesn’t really have too much trouble with the demon then either until the end, because she’s already like, she’s basically called it out. She’s seen it by name.
01:00:34.46
Rhys
um And Emma granted, you know, it could just be that Emma’s crazy, but she started hearing whispers and shit when she became pregnant with a child. So.
01:00:43.15
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, that’s very true. Yeah. But again, it’s very question. Which do you want to believe? Which do you see interpreted throughout their actions?
01:00:54.51
Rhys
So back to the now, back to timeline four. um The cabin across the way, which is abandoned, suddenly has lights come on.
01:01:04.07
Stephen Schneider
That would freak me out right there.
01:01:07.11
Rhys
Lizzie grabs a lantern and a gun and starts walking over there in the middle of the dark.
01:01:10.74
Stephen Schneider
Just prove she’s crazy.
01:01:14.22
Rhys
She sees shadows of people moving around inside. And gun pointed, she comes into the cabin. She’s just like, this is like a police raid, just with a lady in settler dress.
01:01:29.09
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:01:30.28
Rhys
um She enters it pretty well safely with the gun in hand, keeps it in front of her. She doesn’t keep it she doesn’t put it down or hold it up. She’s coming in with a barrel level. um There’s no one there, but all the lights are lit up.
01:01:44.06
Rhys
The bed’s all made and it prompts her to ask, what do you want now? And then she proceeds to destroy a pillow and asks, what must I do to be rid of you?
01:01:53.74
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:01:57.01
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, don’t ask questions that you may not want the answers to.
01:02:01.01
Rhys
Yes. Because the entire place starts to shake and she’s just like imploring it to stop. And when she does, the bed just collapses to the floor or she just collapses to the floor.
01:02:13.74
Rhys
When she gets up, she walks into another room and finds Emma’s diary on the floor.
01:02:23.35
Rhys
When she stands up after grabbing the the diary, Emma is standing there. And she grabs Lizzie by the wrist to ask her, where is your gun, Lizzie? And that causes Lizzie to just completely pass out right there.
01:02:36.93
Stephen Schneider
Yep. Don’t blame her.
01:02:38.15
Rhys
Yep.
01:02:38.82
Stephen Schneider
That’s why you shouldn’t have went to that cabin in the middle of the night when things were lighting up.
01:02:43.04
Rhys
Yes.
01:02:45.70
Rhys
um Timeline three. ah We have her sitting next to a pregnant Emma in bed, reciting the names of the demons off of this flyer, like the name of the demon and what they do.
01:02:58.03
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, that’s probably safe.
01:02:59.69
Rhys
Yes. It turns into this guessing game where she’s like, nick guess the name of the baby. And Lizzie doesn’t want to play, but Emma insists. And if it’s going to be a girl, we’re going to call it Elizabeth because Lizzie is the strongest woman Emma’s ever known.
01:03:15.14
Rhys
And then she’s like, if it’s going to be a boy, Emma really doesn’t want to guess this. ah But Emma forces her to, and she’s like, we’re going to call it Isaac.
01:03:26.70
Rhys
And she’s like, why are you going to call it Isaac? And she’s like, you know.
01:03:33.18
Stephen Schneider
Again, reminded me of Evil Dead right here. It was very odd.
01:03:37.91
Rhys
So one of the things that I think is really interesting is while they’re doing this little um guessing thing. One of the things Lizzie guesses is Samuel.
01:03:48.85
Stephen Schneider
Right.
01:03:49.09
Rhys
And Emma says, Lizzie, I’m not a monster. And at this time, we don’t know what the hell that means.
01:03:54.98
Stephen Schneider
Right.
01:03:56.35
Rhys
ah Then she’s like, Isaac. And she’s like, yeah, it’s Isaac. You know why. um and then Emma just goes back to na reciting demons’ names. one of which that she recites is a sucker, but not the bringer of jealous thoughts, which is definitely seeming to be what’s happening to Lizzie here.
01:04:19.58
Rhys
As along with Mara, the damper of souls, Babel, the keeper of graves.
01:04:25.13
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, for every saint, there’s a demon.
01:04:27.31
Rhys
Yes. Flashback to the present where she is waking up from painting on the floor. She turns back to Emma’s diary, grabbing it. um She takes it back across the field to her cabin, followed by the ghost of Emma, which again is one of those, ah that was there for us.
01:04:46.20
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
01:04:46.85
Rhys
Not her. That’s nothing she’s saying.
01:04:48.07
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, I like that. Yeah, so now we’re questioning our sanity.
01:04:53.62
Rhys
Well, been questioning that for a while.
01:05:00.19
Rhys
Whoa. Oh no.
01:05:02.55
Stephen Schneider
Oh no you lost notes.
01:05:05.50
Rhys
I did. It accidentally went back a thing. I’ll open them up. It’ll just take a second.
01:05:11.69
Stephen Schneider
ah Oh, I thought you lost them, lost them. I did like that list of demons though. um I mean, we, you know, we’ve seen a lot of movies with demons and there were some pretty common ones in there, but I find it interesting that people of the planes would have some little pamphlet, you know, look for these demons.
01:05:33.84
Rhys
Yeah. I mean, i get it. You want to make sure that people who get out there don’t lose touch with God and religion. And what better way than having demons involved? Because that’s something only a priest can deal with. so But um yeah, it was a really odd piece of literature to be just handing out.
01:05:55.28
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Which made me question the, the reverend who’s coming up here. Yeah.
01:06:00.26
Rhys
Yeah, we have another flashback where Emma’s talking like she’s never seen anything like this. The wind is incessant. Gideon’s useless. The best parts of the day are the days she gets to spend with Isaac. Oh, this is written in the diary.
01:06:13.93
Rhys
um And then she’s like she ah talking about Isaac and talking about how it’s pregnant. and She can feel it, our baby. And Lizzie just draws that line, rips the pages out of the diary and throws them in the fire.
01:06:32.99
Rhys
um And then Lizzie ethers herself.
01:06:38.32
Rhys
Just because she’s had it, she wants she just wants the day to be done, which is a ridiculously dangerous thing to do, because when you pass out, the rag falls on your face. If the ether doesn’t evaporate fast enough, you just end up killing yourself.
01:06:49.85
Rhys
But I don’t think she cared at this point.
01:06:50.31
Stephen Schneider
Right. No, it definitely did not seem that way.
01:06:56.24
Rhys
We’re going back to a flashback of Timeline 2, the end of Timeline 2. Lizzie is giving birth. And it’s a pretty accurate description of how rough it is on women and how useless men are. You’re really just there to lend support wherever you can.
01:07:13.53
Rhys
ah She finishes. He’s like, it’s a boy. And then she’s like, why is the baby not making noise? And now we cut to this lone tree out in the middle of the plains where they have just buried this baby and put an S plaque on the tree. So now we know what the S plaque is.
01:07:29.59
Rhys
The S stands for Samuel. Now we know why Emma would be a monster if she named her child Samuel. Lizzie takes her Bible and buries it very loosely in the ground over the top of the baby’s grave.
01:07:35.62
Stephen Schneider
And,
01:07:42.11
Rhys
She says, he’ll use it more than I will.
01:07:47.14
Stephen Schneider
and and you know, even though they hand that tract and pamphlet, whatever, ah a Bible like this would not be easy to come by. not You know, this would probably be a very prized possession at the time.
01:07:56.19
Rhys
Oh, no.
01:07:59.67
Rhys
Oh, yeah.
01:07:59.83
Stephen Schneider
So,
01:07:59.97
Rhys
It’s gold-leafed-edged pages.
01:08:02.20
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:08:02.35
Rhys
i mean, and when we say gold-leafed-edged, that’s like gold-leafed-edges.
01:08:06.20
Stephen Schneider
Right.
01:08:07.61
Rhys
That’s not some painter name.
01:08:07.86
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. So it’s not something they would easily get rid of. You know, I mean, Bibles like that used to be handed down to get the genealogy ah going back generations and stuff.
01:08:18.75
Stephen Schneider
So very interesting that she chose to do that.
01:08:19.35
Rhys
Yep.
01:08:23.72
Rhys
We jump back to the present. Lizzie is actually waking up from her tree trip on ether on top of the blankets.
01:08:28.78
Stephen Schneider
Probably with a headache.
01:08:30.07
Rhys
Yeah. The fire’s burnt down to coals. Then it’s a little chilly in the cabin. So she takes a rifle. She takes a rifle with her everywhere from here on out.
01:08:38.04
Stephen Schneider
yes course i don’t blame her
01:08:40.33
Rhys
Yes. She goes to load up the wood stove and somebody comes up on the porch and you’re like, is this a demon? No. Um,
01:08:47.50
Stephen Schneider
Well, maybe.
01:08:49.55
Rhys
I think honestly it’s the reverend. And I think in all honesty, he’s lucky. She didn’t just shoot him.
01:08:55.53
Stephen Schneider
Yes, that’s what I thought.
01:08:56.52
Rhys
She is so on edge.
01:09:00.18
Stephen Schneider
But would it have mattered in the long run?
01:09:00.47
Rhys
Uh, yeah, she feeds him and he’s like, it’s the best food I’ve had in a long time. It’s a common statement when it comes to her food.
01:09:11.72
Rhys
yeah.
01:09:15.09
Rhys
He said he’s been traveling for a while, spreading the word of God. And Lizzie replies, I don’t suppose God has much business out here. He’s like, oh, you you’ve kind of fallen away from the church. She’s like, you go up and stay at Emma and Gideon’s cabin.
01:09:29.18
Rhys
It’d be a nice place for you to stay for the night. There’s no one there. Leave in the morning. um he says, you and your family will be in his prayers. And she says, don’t open the door after dark for anyone, not even for me.
01:09:41.49
Rhys
um And as he rides away, you can see the shadow. of um he and hurt his horse dancing across her cabin as he leaves.
01:09:52.39
Rhys
She finishes her chores for the day. we find her asleep in bed, waking up to somebody beating on the door, saying, Mrs. Macklin, ah there’s something out here, please. And it’s the Reverend. And she doesn’t take her own advice. She lets him in.
01:10:05.51
Rhys
Um, he seems very shaken up and thanks for repeatedly sitting in a rocking chair, holding the lantern. He asks her what it is that’s out there. And she’s like, she doesn’t know it’s been there for as long as they have.
01:10:18.63
Rhys
Um,
01:10:20.49
Stephen Schneider
And they’re just talking about it matter of factly.
01:10:23.19
Rhys
yeah.
01:10:23.31
Stephen Schneider
Of course, I think she suspects demon, but at this point he’s like, well, supposedly he doesn’t know. Yeah.
01:10:30.78
Rhys
Yes. He’s, he asked the super pertinent question. Why do you stay? That’s a great question. um She’s like, Isaac hasn’t seen it.
01:10:43.54
Rhys
And the Reverend says, but surely Emma saw it. And ah now Lizzie realizes it’s not really the Reverend because she’s never mentioned Emma to this guy by name.
01:10:54.12
Stephen Schneider
right typical
01:10:56.21
Rhys
And he realizes he messed up and he enjoyed being the Reverend and his eyes have gone all black.
01:11:05.10
Rhys
Yeah. He gets up and he’s crossing the floor towards her. and he takes this step and his leg, like he rolls his ankle, his leg kind of cracks and suddenly throws his head back and yells.
01:11:17.96
Rhys
And his shadow is almost a cloud as we look at it from the outside in because Lizzie’s not in the cabin anymore. She is outside. um She runs to Emma and Gideon’s cabin and shuts herself inside.
01:11:30.16
Rhys
And I bet she doesn’t open that door for anybody at night, even if it’s the reverend.
01:11:33.27
Stephen Schneider
ah
01:11:36.70
Rhys
Um, well, the next day she’s walking back, she finds the reverend’s body just lying out there under the tree and just leaves it lay.
01:11:42.63
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:11:45.20
Rhys
When she returns to the cabin, her her door is wide open and the Bible that she buried with Samuel is lying on the threshold.
01:11:52.17
Stephen Schneider
And, and you’re, you’re, you know, you yell at the people in slasher movies. Don’t go in the basement. Don’t, you know, you’re looking at her like, what do you yell at her to do? She, she can’t go anywhere. It’s days to get somewhere. She has no horse or anything.
01:12:07.97
Stephen Schneider
She’d be stuck out in the planes and wherever the wind can reach, you’ve got these demons.
01:12:13.53
Rhys
Yeah. So she does really the only thing she can. um She leaves the book there, and takes a bath, staring at the book the whole time with her gun within reach.
01:12:22.87
Stephen Schneider
yeah
01:12:27.19
Rhys
and And here we here we are. We’re like finally to act five, really. She finishes her bath. She gets dressed in what I have to assume is her Sunday best. Fixes her hair. She takes the gun, heads out to the tree where Samuel was buried, sits down with her back against the tree and puts the gun in her mouth.
01:12:46.41
Rhys
But before she can pull the trigger, she sees a horse and a rider in the distance. She looks puzzled, gets up and points the gun at the rider and just stands there. And it’s Isaac coming back from town.
01:12:59.87
Rhys
um And she doesn’t put the gun down. And right here is where Steve’s going. She’s shooting him. She’s shooting him right now.
01:13:05.81
Stephen Schneider
ah Yeah, and it really showed her degradation. She know finally no longer trusts her senses. But I think more importantly, we shouldn’t trust what we’re seeing, even though I think they’re really trying to fool us a lot to trust what we’re seeing.
01:13:24.62
Rhys
She has both, both Flint’s pulled back. I mean, she is cocked and ready to go, but he manages to like talking to a scared horse. He manages to talk her down enough to grab the gun away from her.
01:13:38.27
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, because if not, that really would have hurt.
01:13:40.76
Rhys
Yeah.
01:13:43.90
Rhys
Um, he says he saw the Reverend on his way home and he he said that she was very hospitable. um and then she’s like, no, no, you didn’t. I’m like pushes him away and just has this little bit of a breakdown right there, leaving him standing there, holding his hat and leading his horse. She just walks away from him.
01:14:03.83
Rhys
Several days later, movers from town are emptying out Gideon’s cabin. Here’s the mystery guy who we didn’t know who he was.
01:14:09.76
Stephen Schneider
right yeah um I was like, wow.
01:14:12.36
Rhys
Lizzie’s sitting on a hill in the distance watching them. Isaac lets her sleep in the next day as a surprise, and he brought the cedar trunk from Gideon’s house full of books. She’s like, what?
01:14:25.83
Stephen Schneider
First of all, they just tell people go sleep in this like haunted house now. And then they just take stuff, whatever they want. I’m like, I, I, I wouldn’t want that crap in my, get it away.
01:14:36.12
Stephen Schneider
This is just bad omens here.
01:14:38.05
Rhys
And that’s what she’s saying. He’s like, oh, they’re just books. We could read them over the winter and you’re cooped up inside.
01:14:44.72
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, good plan.
01:14:45.87
Rhys
Yeah, like you’re going to make it to winter, buddy.
01:14:48.55
Stephen Schneider
yeah Yeah, we’ve seen the end of this reel.
01:14:52.30
Rhys
Isaac lets her, oh, right. It’s raining outside and Gideon’s reading Frankenstein outside to Lizzie.
01:14:58.09
Stephen Schneider
And that’s something they did not do a lot in this movie is use a lot of rain to set more, you know, just bring your feelings down and sodden and all that. They really didn’t do that. They could have because, I mean, people don’t realize those planes, there are seasons when they get rain a lot.
01:15:15.43
Stephen Schneider
and And that’s used quite often to give you that feeling. But they didn’t do that a lot here.
01:15:20.20
Rhys
Yeah, I think everything’s shifted. So they get more monsoon season. It would be later in the summer.
01:15:27.27
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, probably.
01:15:28.33
Rhys
So, but still ah it’s raining. He’s reading Frankenstein out loud. It’s the passage where the monster is demanding that Frankenstein make him a mate. that will be harmless and free from the misery he now feels.
01:15:41.10
Rhys
um And she’s moving the books from the trunk to the bookshelf. And she finds a flyer called Demons of the Prairie. So we know Emma had one too.
01:15:54.91
Rhys
Well, we’d known she’s had one, but.
01:15:54.99
Stephen Schneider
And you also got to wonder with the how sparse it is with people traveling. We’ve not seen a single traveler except the reverend. So you yeah my question is, well, how does that reveling reverend get to be right there when someone’s coming through and gets them this pamphlet? i don’t i don’t think that reent reverend was a real reverend at all at any point.
01:16:18.99
Rhys
Yeah. Well, and it actually result when we go back to flashback timeline one, we see that he wasn’t really a reverend after all, but
01:16:28.99
Stephen Schneider
right
01:16:31.00
Rhys
um she’s moving the books. It has that book. um It’s the same flyer. She said, Isaac throws that one in the fire. He just can’t burn enough of these things.
01:16:40.46
Stephen Schneider
And that’s, that also shows the superstition because he really does believe it, but he thinks he gets rid of it. So it’s, it’s safe and oh everything’s okay then.
01:16:51.38
Rhys
Yeah. um
01:16:56.35
Rhys
He finds another copy when he comes in carrying firewood. She’s like, it was Emma’s. She was seeing something. And he says, all that’s nonsense and nothing can good come from reading it. Look, it costs Emma her own life. She killed herself.
01:17:10.08
Rhys
And Lizzie’s like, I don’t think she did. and Isaac leaves into the dark. Lizzie runs out to stop him. But when she opens the door, there’s the ghost of Emma standing on her porch asking, where’s your gun, Lizzie?
01:17:23.94
Rhys
So she’s like, okay, I’ll show you my freaking gun. She goes into the house and grabs it. And then suddenly the wind blows all of the windows in. She points your gun at the windows and the wind physically just blows her across the room back against the wall.
01:17:39.49
Rhys
um She’s trying to make her way, crawling across the floor and looks at the rocking chair. um The reverend sitting inside her body levitates up towards the ceiling and then drops down onto the kitchen table. And this is where the shears pierce her side, lower right abdomen, not unlike where the centurion pierced Christ’s side while he was hanging on the cross.
01:18:02.42
Stephen Schneider
very true ah most
01:18:04.29
Rhys
And as i my notes, I’m like, in those days, that was quite possibly a fatal wound.
01:18:09.58
Stephen Schneider
major wounds like that might have been know
01:18:11.58
Rhys
Yeah. The door slams shut and the screen goes to black.
01:18:18.51
Rhys
The next thing we see Lizzie’s lying on her bed and the ghost of Emma’s walking around the cabin humming. Isaac’s sitting in the rocking chair. He has Emma’s diary and asks Lizzie how long she she’s had it.
01:18:30.77
Rhys
And then she realizes she’s tied to the bed. She’s insisting it’s not safe there and they have to leave. And Isaac’s asking how Emma got her gun. This is all cut in with flashbacks of that night.
01:18:43.60
Rhys
um The night that Emma died, Emma approaches Lizzie and Lizzie is holding Lizzie’s gun. um oh no, she’s holding Lizzie’s gun. Lizzie takes the gun from Emma and Emma says she told Gideon he should just leave.
01:18:58.22
Rhys
Isaac’s convinced that Lizzie did something to Emma because we’re ping ponging in time here.
01:19:03.41
Stephen Schneider
Right.
01:19:04.46
Rhys
um She is begging him to untie her. We go back to the past. Emma has this notion that it’s going to be a thruple. Now it’s just going to be her and Lizzie and Isaac um back to the present. Isaac’s like, you, you killed her. And Lizzie’s like, no, I didn’t.
01:19:22.44
Rhys
um And then she notes that there’s a piece of broken glass on the table, which she grabs um and starts to work on the ropes on her hands. And the demonic shadow is in the cabin. Isaac’s facing it. He doesn’t even realize it’s there.
01:19:37.40
Rhys
And it’s approaching Lizzie. Isaac says there’s nothing there. And his eyes seem to have gone black.
01:19:45.31
Rhys
She manages to get her hands free. And he goes over to try and re restrain her again. And she takes that little shard glass and sticks it right into his neck. And then in the flashback, she shoots Emma.
01:19:56.83
Stephen Schneider
yeah She’s on a tear. Right.
01:19:59.10
Rhys
Yeah, she’s killed everyone now.
01:20:05.46
Rhys
She stumbles out of the cabin as the sun’s rising with a wound in her side and she collapsed collapses onto the prairie. um And then she has this flashback to timeline one, which has never been mentioned, although it would technically was when she was seeing the crosses of all the people who died.
01:20:21.58
Stephen Schneider
right
01:20:27.87
Rhys
She’s traveling across the prairie. She meets the same reverend who hands her the flyer demons of the prairie. So this guy out in the middle of nowhere is standing there, handing flyers out to women of traveling groups, hit her, hit Emma. And then he just magically shows up at Lizzie’s house while she’s all alone.
01:20:50.45
Stephen Schneider
That’s what I’m saying. Yeah.
01:20:51.37
Rhys
Then magically disappears after he’s supposedly dead.
01:20:57.44
Rhys
Um, she’s like, there’s something out there. There’s nothing out there. This, this land, there’s something wrong with it. Um, And your mind is looking for something to worry about. This is all a conversation between between her and Isaac that she was having while she was still pregnant.
01:21:13.68
Rhys
It’s the same conversations, the same argument she was having with Emma, but Emma was taking the Lizzie lines and she was giving the Isaac lines. There’s nothing wrong. Everything’s fine.
01:21:24.50
Stephen Schneider
Right.
01:21:25.57
Rhys
um Her bed is now in the middle of the prairie as she’s sitting on it. ah Looking in the distance and the camera pulls back, there’s no bed there. She’s just sitting on the prairie and it literally looks like Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s world painting.
01:21:40.42
Rhys
Cause she’s just sitting there in the middle of the thing.
01:21:40.47
Stephen Schneider
Oh,
01:21:42.37
Rhys
and Roll credits with this very relentless closing dissonance violin music playing, which was a lot like, you know, the wind itself.
01:21:50.67
Stephen Schneider
ah yeah, yeah.
01:21:54.21
Stephen Schneider
With the wind, ah which probably was.
01:21:55.12
Rhys
Yeah.
01:21:55.97
Stephen Schneider
ah So, so did all of that really happen or was it all just in her mind? You know, cause there was nothing there when, you know, at the end her mind was snapped and it’s a good question as to what the hell really happened in this movie.
01:22:12.34
Rhys
I always like to look at it from the supernatural point of view. um I just watched a movie last night. They look like people. It was a well done movie. um It’s all about mental health and like the state of mental health in the United States present day.
01:22:28.13
Rhys
But my whole thing was like, there’s this guy who’s having these hallucinations. And my whole thing was like, at the end, ah was like, how awesome would it be if we found out that they weren’t hallucinations and he was right all along, that would be incredible.
01:22:43.87
Rhys
But this was literally made by like, you know, two guys and a camera and 50 bucks. So yeah they didn’t have the kind of money to do that kind of crazy stuff. But I, so in this case, I like to think that parading around as a reverend is this wind demon who is corrupting women so he can consume the souls of their children when they die at birth.
01:23:05.20
Rhys
And if you find him out, he’s going to come back and get you.
01:23:10.03
Stephen Schneider
but but where’d everything go that, that, I mean, they showed nothing.
01:23:10.21
Rhys
Yeah, that’s my take.
01:23:14.78
Rhys
Yeah.
01:23:15.54
Stephen Schneider
So, and of course, of course I also, but that, that last part of the scene where they’re fading back in that, that we’re not really seeing physically her that were in her mind that she snapped.
01:23:16.19
Rhys
Well, I’m not saying she’s not crazy.
01:23:29.15
Rhys
and
01:23:30.18
Stephen Schneider
And that’s her desolation of a mind now, uh,
01:23:33.29
Rhys
Inside her mind, it is nothing but prairie and wind.
01:23:36.69
Stephen Schneider
Yes. Yes.
01:23:37.77
Rhys
Yeah.
01:23:38.57
Stephen Schneider
ah But you know, that, that sometimes makes some of the best movies where yeah you think about it, you interpret it, you think about it, you know, it’s not the watching of the movie that makes them great. Sometimes it’s the days, weeks, months, or whatever, of thinking about it afterwards that make them great.
01:23:55.17
Rhys
It’s true. Very much so.
01:23:58.75
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. We’ve watched enough movies to have that many times.
01:24:02.85
Rhys
But that’s the wind. It’s a stream. It’s on ah ah Amazon prime right now.
01:24:06.96
Stephen Schneider
Yep, Amazon Prime.
01:24:07.35
Rhys
If you want to catch it, it’s certainly it’s.
01:24:08.88
Stephen Schneider
Yep.
01:24:10.32
Rhys
And again, you know, if you’re looking for Kane Hodder, throwing someone around the soundstage, this is not it for you.
01:24:17.10
Stephen Schneider
No, this isn’t one of those movies.
01:24:17.26
Rhys
ah did what it This really reminded me of this is a literary natural horror film, not unlike hold the dark.
01:24:18.42
Stephen Schneider
We’ve watched those movies. This is different.
01:24:29.15
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, yeah. I thought the same thing reminded me of that.
01:24:31.28
Rhys
It felt like a book. Yeah, felt like a novel. ah There were natural aspects at it with this hint of supernatural. and but This was far more supernatural than Hold the Dark. I mean, that was very subtle, but.
01:24:42.85
Stephen Schneider
the The Hold the Dark book, did did I give that to you to read or did you give that to me to read?
01:24:47.58
Rhys
I gave that to you, Reed.
01:24:47.77
Stephen Schneider
One of us, you gave it. Did I give it back or do I still have it?
01:24:51.07
Rhys
You might. So I don’t I don’t care. I’ve already read it.
01:24:52.71
Stephen Schneider
i
01:24:53.23
Rhys
So if you’ve got it, fine.
01:24:53.72
Stephen Schneider
Right, yeah. i But the book was different than the movie as far as how that felt. I remember that. So I wonder what this one’s like.
01:25:02.41
Rhys
Well, this wasn’t a, well, you mean the original novel from the, yeah.
01:25:05.64
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:25:07.84
Rhys
Yeah, that’d be interesting.
01:25:10.12
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, i always liked that. to See what happens. But yeah, Hold the Dark. I remember reading it going, well, I didn’t get that out of the movie at all. this is so But it didn’t make either of them worse.
01:25:19.44
Rhys
Yeah. The twist at the end of the novel is radically different from the twist at the end of the movie.
01:25:27.56
Stephen Schneider
Right. Yeah. and And, you know, again, arguably what they did in the movie was better for a visual storytelling.
01:25:35.52
Rhys
Yes. Yes.
01:25:36.45
Stephen Schneider
ah So, you know, yeah i sometimes disagree when people want to get all up in arms that it wasn’t scene for scene what was in the book. Well, there are different forms of storytelling. Sometimes you have to do it differently.
01:25:48.23
Stephen Schneider
You know, video games and comics are other different forms of storytelling that you don’t do the same as scene for scene.
01:25:51.81
Rhys
Yeah.
01:25:55.10
Rhys
I just listened to our review of the ritual and we had the exact same conversation where it was like, you know, this was how the book was, this is how the movie was.
01:25:59.44
Stephen Schneider
ah
01:26:02.51
Rhys
And the choices were different enough that they were conscious choices made because they depicted the theme of the story better in the film medium. Yeah.
01:26:11.43
Stephen Schneider
Right. I mean, look at any video game based on a movie where it’s like scene for scene. You act out the scene in the movie during the video game. Those video games suck.
01:26:22.13
Stephen Schneider
Nobody plays them.
01:26:22.73
Rhys
Yeah.
01:26:22.97
Stephen Schneider
They get horrible reviews. Who cares? Because I’ve seen the movie, you know? So.
01:26:28.33
Rhys
Yeah, the Victor Schulstrom version of this of the book is far closer to the actual novel than this. This kind of just takes the the book as like a jumping off point. um You know, and here’s the theme. But other than that, it’s it’s quite different. There’s a heck of a lot more characters in the actual novel.
01:26:45.47
Stephen Schneider
Oh, wow. Okay.
01:26:46.29
Rhys
So…
01:26:47.38
Stephen Schneider
it It was a great movie. I enjoyed it a lot. I thought it was just the right amount of supernatural elements and showing what was what, but leaving it open a lot.
01:26:56.66
Rhys
And the complexity, the complexity that she purposely left there, appreciate It made it not boring.
01:26:56.74
Stephen Schneider
So. all
01:27:00.81
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:27:03.62
Stephen Schneider
Yes. Yeah. Oh you yeah. Don’t blink. Don’t walk out of the room to go pee. Cause you’re going to miss something and you may not realize you missed something until later.
01:27:07.85
Rhys
Yeah. For sure.
01:27:12.46
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:27:12.77
Rhys
Yep. Yep.
01:27:14.23
Stephen Schneider
So, all right. So there’s the wind. That’s our second one. Wow. We’re moving along on this season already.
01:27:18.83
Rhys
two Yeah.
01:27:19.88
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. What’s up coming up for three.
01:27:22.13
Rhys
So I just made ah literally just a second ago, made a fly by my pants decision.
01:27:28.26
Stephen Schneider
That’s okay. Nobody knows what they were.
01:27:30.26
Rhys
ah Right. Nobody else knows. Well, the one that we had next was again, kind of a cerebral, is it really, or is it, or is it, so we’re going to do a girl walks home at night, which I believe is the only Iranian film I have on my list.
01:27:40.14
Stephen Schneider
oh okay.
01:27:44.61
Rhys
And there’s no doubts about, oh is someone crazy? yeah That doesn’t, that doesn’t factor here.
01:27:50.80
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. So there’s an American remake of this one also, I believe. And I’ve seen that one.
01:27:55.80
Rhys
Oh, I did not know.
01:27:57.29
Stephen Schneider
I think so. um I think the American one is a Christmas one. Does this one? Well, it might not take place at Christmas.
01:28:04.72
Rhys
and this takes place in Tehran. So yeah, it would be Ramadan.
01:28:06.84
Stephen Schneider
Right. But. Oh.
01:28:10.33
Rhys
So ah it’s funny you say that because now I’m really going to be looking for correlations with let the right one in because they’re very similar, you know, in theme.
01:28:18.28
Stephen Schneider
oh
01:28:23.46
Rhys
um
01:28:23.79
Stephen Schneider
Right.
01:28:24.81
Rhys
and now there’s an American remake, you know, let the, you know, so
01:28:28.94
Stephen Schneider
um I’m going to double check that. and We’ll talk about it when we watch it. Cause I could be wrong, but I, I think I saw a girl walks home at night. It was an American movie. So,
01:28:40.37
Rhys
figures.
01:28:42.45
Stephen Schneider
but it was a Christmas one. So it’s one of the November movies I watched at Christmas or between Christmas.
01:28:46.33
Rhys
Okay.
01:28:47.71
Stephen Schneider
So, all right, man. So there we go. The wind. Very good.
01:28:50.46
Rhys
Awesome.
01:28:51.55
Stephen Schneider
Later.
01:28:52.23
Rhys
See ya.
