The Windmill is a movie about a group of tourists whose innocent tour of the Netherlands’ countryside takes a sinister turn when they visit the one windmill devoted to the devil. Who knew that the devil liked windmills? Awwwww. For the fallen angel that has everything…Who doesn’t love bread, am I right? It is Nick Jongerius’ directorial debut for a feature film, and I hope that we see more from him because there are enough solid ideas and moments in the film to suggest that with maturity and more resources, he has the potential to do something unique.
The Windmill is objectively not a strong movie for many reasons, but it is difficult to know whether the problem is rooted in lack of funding and time, or the director was oblivious to the flaws in his film. The reason that I think that it is the prior, not the latter, is that the ideas are good. I’ve never considered a windmill as a potential locus for demonic activity, but it works and has some Biblical weight, which Jongerius may not have consciously known, but absorbed because Bible stories are often in the ether so it adds texture to the premise. Check out Judges 6, the story of Gideon meeting the Angel of the Lord then flip it. It works. I liked how the devil worshipping miller trapped his victims.
The Windmill also had me completely invested because the best horror ideas also capture quotidian social problems to flesh out the underlying tension in the story. Jongerius uses the theme of misogyny and the common distrust of women as inherently criminally crazy and threatening to further frustrate the tourists’ ability to deal with the actual threat. I know that Jongerius is Dutch, but this movie was released in 2016, and for his film to distill and evoke the same frustration of watching a small minority of guys hijack power while most people looked on or allowed it to happen in a completely different context is remarkable. Disreputable men casually dismissing the majority, which consists of women and minorities, in the face of increasingly contrary evidence because of their own personal issues while projecting those issues on to women is a universal phenomenon that seems to cross all borders, religions, races, etc. The demon of misogyny was an unspoken theme that ran throughout the story, and I loved it.
The Windmill is also an unremittingly bleak movie, which I love. I love a messed up ending. I’m not saying that people don’t survive, but I am saying that even the best ideas and attempted solutions don’t go as expected, which I didn’t see coming. Characters aren’t necessarily going to get rewarded for figuring things out or becoming a better person. Just because audiences enjoy watching people overcome an obstacle that existed for a significant period of time doesn’t mean that it was ever realistic. You’re fighting for your life and are under a lot of stress, but you found the golden ticket to break the curse. I know that most people like happy endings and to reward people for finally tackling their issues and doing better, but in real life, the only reward for being a better person is being a better person.
There was criticism by others of The Windmill’s meditation on sin and repentance getting the short shrift versus the titillating monster miller. I can be a bit of a Jesus freak so I practically swoon when people use the name of Jesus and defeat the monster, but I didn’t get that. I know that the person wasn’t looking for that per se, but every movie does not have to be elevated plus I would encourage movie viewers to ask themselves if there are other themes that aren’t explicitly referenced such as sin and repentance, but are repeated throughout the film such as misogyny.
Unfortunately the explicit theme of sin and repentance raised a problem for the killer miller that is resolved by a character plot twist that doesn’t entirely work for me. I could have missed something, but I wonder if not only the demonic miller was a supernatural figure, which based on a quick search indicates was NOT the case, however as a viewer, it was the explanation that I came up with while I was watching the film. I guess that the film wasn’t clear, or I’m getting slow. If it wasn’t supernatural, then I needed more explanation on motive. While that kind of twist has backing in a Dracula horror movie context, I don’t understand what the incentive would be in this context. The twist also was a great way to hurt smarter characters without diminishing their survival skills.
Visually I don’t like the horror style of The Windmill. It is closer to a Giallo style in terms of gore, which I always find garish and distracts me from being able to suspend disbelief. Giallo always looks cheap and unrealistic to me. It could be chalked up to lack of funding so it is a fixable issue unless Jongerius likes that kind of gore and isn’t into realism. Without seeing more of his work, I won’t know which one applies. I’m hoping that it is the prior because Jongerius does depict violence and supernatural events in a unique way. For example, instead of a flashback, he uses a unique way to show the viewer that a murder happened in the past. I’ve never seen any director use technology like that, but if more people see this movie, it would be a great moment to ripoff, and no one would know that it wasn’t that director’s idea. It felt like something that Brian DePalma would do, which I didn’t realize was an influence until after I watched the movie.
I have no idea how Japanese people will receive The Windmill. There is a Japanese character, and after the movie, I found out that the actor speaks English. I retroactively felt some kind of way that his character wasn’t permitted to communicate effectively with other characters throughout the film. On one hand, it helps advance the plot if that character can’t communicate what he knows to everyone else otherwise the movie would be shorter. On the other hand, what the hell?!? I’m going to defer to Japanese viewers on that one. Otherwise I have to applaud the idea of a bunch of strangers from different countries being thrown together and seeing how they react because they’re not a cohesive group. We don’t know about them, and they don’t know each other so we’re learning about the mythology behind what is happening to them and curious about them. We can’t anticipate how they’re going to react to each other and the situation although some characters were easier to peg than others.
I could see most people watching The Windmill and dismissing it as a crap B movie, but I watch a lot of horror movies, and I think Jongerius has potential to do something remarkable. IMDb indicates that he is devoting his energy to television series, which is a bigger commitment than a movie, and I haven’t even kept up with the shows that I watch and enjoy so it is unlikely that I’ll be delving into his subsequent work.