Wintertide Review

Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival Coverage

Wintertide review.

Night two of the Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival concluded with a screening of John Barnard’s Wintertide. A haunting look at depression, isolation, and the unseen things we take from each other.

Festival movie coverage will not contain spoilers.

Wintertide

Directed by John Barnard

Written by John Barnard, Carrie-May Siggins

Starring Niamh Carolan, Solange Sookram, John B. Lowe, Josh Strait, Jeremy Walmsley, Darcy Fehr and Colleen Furlan

Wintertide Review

You won’t always know what’s going on in Wintertide…but you’ll always feel where it’s going.  It’s an important distinction and everything the film does is in the service of delivering the latter.  For a movie that deals with themes like depression and isolation…that means it can, at times, be hard to get through.  It serves an important function in making Wintertide’s tale work.  But it also means that stretches of the film won’t exactly thrill and excite viewers.  We aren’t supposed to understand everything about the story.  At least not right away.  It’s presenting an unknowable world that will feel strikingly familiar to anyone who has ever been overcome by their loneliness.

Set in a snowy town that hasn’t seen the sun in months, Wintertide follows Beth (Niamh Carolan), a volunteer who spots infected people for round up.  Her father has gone missing, and the normally docile infected people are starting to become feral.  At least when they’re around Beth.  Survivors get by with handfuls of prescription drugs.  Beth believes herself to be immune to the infection and refuses to take her medication.  When those closest to her begin to turn into “strays” (Wintertide’s name for the infected) Beth is forced to confront the possibility that she is something else entirely.

Wintertide puts its metaphor front and center immediately.  Before leaving the house to patrol, Beth uses a chalk board to update the number of days since she’s seen the Sun.  She encounters a “stray” and calls in the location so it can be put into containment.  The stray is more active and violent than a typical version.  The town is almost completely empty.  There are a few people living out their lives…but most people have succumbed to the infection that crippled society. 

The word you’ll expect to read at this point is “zombie”.  The strays certainly shamble like our favorite George A. Romero creation.  Beth’s presence incites them to action in ways that are unique to everyone else.  The key here is that they aren’t zombies.  The infection that has run through the town, perhaps the world, is a clear allegory to depression.  They aren’t after your brains or flesh.  They want your lifeforce…having been drained of their own. 

Beth takes a woman home one night and dreams that a version of herself is sucking the life out of her guest.  The next morning the woman is listless and starting to show signs of turning.  Beth initially assumes that her aversion to the prescribed drugs has led to her immunity to the infection.  When it happens again with another person…she starts to suspect something else is at play. 

Wintertide repeats a pattern throughout its second act.  Beth takes someone home to find a temporary connection.  She dreams of a doppelganger sucking the life out of them as they sleep.  That person turns into a stray.  She is also trying to find her father…coming across him for brief moments to keep her hope alive.  The cycle feels repetitive…because, well…it is repetitive.  The movie gives you a bit more information each time…but it is a slow crawl in the darkness of understanding what the story is about.  How can Beth’s dreams hurt people?  What is in these drugs?  Why are the strays uniquely interested in Beth?

Wintertide eventually answers these questions in different ways.  Sometimes it is metaphorical.  Sometimes it isn’t.  The metaphorical works better.  The movie often evokes Jonathan Glazer’s 2013 classic Under the Skin.  When it separates itself most (by attempting to outright explain things), Wintertide is at its weakest.  It also happens when the pace picks up the most.  So…pick your poison there.

This is a beautiful film with a fantastic performance at its center.  It’s commitment to making you feel the world more than understand it marks its greatest success.  You may not find the journey or the destination in line with what you want…but that is very much the point of Wintertide.  This is an experience that feels more familiar as it progresses.  It’s purposely vague in the best moments.  Tone and pace are used to create a confusing, lonely and depressing world for the audience to be pulled into.  It’s been 100 days without Sun.  Wintertide masters the effect of dropping you into its darkness.  Of course…that’s not the most appealing concept to commit to watching.  That’s also the point.

Scare Value

Wintertide unfolds at a deliberate pace. At times it becomes very repetitive. Doing so matches the content of the film and lulls you into a world that you don’t fully understand. But it’s a world you’ll know. A world you’ll feel. And a world you’ve been a part of at some point in your life. Wintertide has the ability to mesmerize you, move you, and make you think about a broader topic than seemed to be the case when the film starts. It can also frustrate you, string you along, and leave your mind wandering as it crawls from scene to scene. These are all necessary feelings to find full fulfillment in the world of Wintertide. And it makes you feel every bit of each.

3.5/5

Wintertide Links

Rent/Buy on VOD from Amazon

Buy on Blu-Ray from Amazon

Wintertide Trailer

If you enjoyed this review of Wintertide, check out another festival movie…What Lurks Beneath or check out all of our festival reviews.