Wind Walkers (2015) A group of friends venture out into the remote Florida Everglades for their annual hunting trip. In doing so they have inadvertently upset the spirit realm and consequently become hunted by an ancient and rather grumpy curse in the form of 'wind walkers'. Our protagonists are soldiers, two of which have recently returned from combat abroad. Whatever it is that the duo have witnessed abroad has had a rather detrimental effect on one of them Sean Kotz (Zane Holtz). We know this because Sean is unable to give his girlfriend the quickie she is gagging for at the back of the store she works at. He is also taking medication for schizophrenia. Writer/director Russell Friedenberg also offers up the possibility that Sean may be possessed by the wind walkers. One thing is certain, Sean is pretty nifty at running and he does an awful lot of it throughout the film. Upon reaching the hut, that they intend to use as their base for the trip, we see a mighty mean storm kicking off however one flashback later and I was kind of wondering whether the storm had blown over and wondering what the point of including it momentarily was. Yes I 'get' the storm represents the spirits expressing their anger with the hunters so why didn't the wind walkers just keep the storm going so the hunt would get rained off and never happen? The group starts distrusting Sean. They question whether Sean 'brought' something back from his time away serving in the Middle East. It would appear so from the physical manifestation of the well-miffed entity. It's also rather difficult to keep with the plotting given that it kind of jumps all over the place with little in the way of logic almost as if someone else took over the writing without fully reading what had come before. Other critics have been rather generous with their reviewing of Wind Walkers. They readily admitting that the film's structure is muddled and weak but give it a good review without justification in their critique for actually doing so. I've come across situations like this before where reviews are amended to appease the film-makers or their marketing company. I can only think that a similar thing has happened here. It's great for getting punters to rent/buy/view the flick but it's under false pretences too. Heavy on mood but rather lacking in a coherent narrative Wind Walkers is one-note and confused. There's a little bit of Wolfen in the mix and its sense of paranoia mirrors John Carpenter's The Thing, even with a nod to the outburst about being tied up. Ultimately Wind Walkers offers little new and in offering up staid ideas it really needed something special elsewhere to make this worth sitting through. It doesn't.
