Curator Watchlist
A bleak, tightly wound murder mystery that uses its frozen setting and procedural structure to build real dread. Strong performances and a grim sense of place make it memorable, even if its handling of Indigenous characters and trauma is imperfect.
Where to watch: Buy
Thu · 1h 47m
Director: Taylor Sheridan
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Gil Birmingham
An FBI agent teams with the town's veteran game tracker to investigate a murder that occurred on a Native American reservation.
Taylor Sheridan
Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Gil Birmingham
A bleak, tightly wound murder mystery that uses its frozen setting and procedural structure to build real dread. Strong performances and a grim sense of place make it memorable, even if its handling of Indigenous characters and trauma is imperfect.
Wind River is a hard, wintry crime drama that gets a lot of mileage out of atmosphere. The snowbound reservation setting feels isolated and unforgiving, and Taylor Sheridan uses that landscape to turn a murder investigation into something closer to a survival story. The film’s best asset is its escalation of tension: it starts as a procedural and steadily becomes something far more punishing.
Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen give the movie a steady emotional core, and Gil Birmingham adds real weight whenever the film lets him speak. The performances help offset some of the script’s blunt-force tendencies, which can feel overly schematic or self-serious at times. Still, the movie knows how to hold a grim mood and keep it there.
What lingers most is the sense of injustice and exhaustion. It’s not subtle, and it isn’t especially generous in how it frames every character or institution, but it is effective as a bleak genre piece. If you want a cold, tense thriller with a strong sense of place and a brutal final stretch, this delivers.
#1 gizmo fan (4★) · 2837 likes
women are a fucking force. elizabeth olsen is an angel. jon bernthal is an angel. SHE RAN SIX MILES IN THE SNOW. I FUCKING. BYE.
isabel 🦋 (4★) · 2124 likes
My favorite part was when they killed all those assholes
ava adore (4.5★) · 1519 likes
It made me cry and then I went up to taylor Sheridan my new favorite man alive aka a good screenwriter and director and told him He Made Me Cry and he said that's a goal and then I asked him if I could hug him and he said absolutely and it was precious
lauren (4★) · 1358 likes
there’s no reason why jeremy renners character couldn’t have been played by a native american actor 👀 👀
Evan (4.5★) · 1351 likes
Speechless. During the entire final 25 minutes I sat there stiff as a board with my jaw on the floor. Some of the most intense stuff I've ever seen in a movie. Wind River has compelling characters, engaging story, beautiful visuals, and outstanding performances. Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, and Graham Greene all knock it out of the freaken park. If Renner doesn't get an Oscar Nomination, it will be an absolute travesty. You would think Taylor Sheridan has been directing for YEARS!
Shares the same hard-edged, morally grim worldview and a similarly oppressive sense of tension.
Another lean, adult crime drama built on landscape, desperation, and moral compromise.
For its spare violence, fatalism, and relentless pressure-cooker suspense.
A procedural thriller where environment and guilt slowly erode the lead investigator.
A dark missing-person mystery with grief, rage, and escalating moral ugliness.
For its tragic crime-story structure and heavy emotional fallout around violence and loss.
A stripped-down revenge thriller that shares the same cold, punishing energy.
A snowbound thriller that uses isolation and winter conditions as a source of dread.
A grim investigation story with a focus on hunting a predator through a hostile landscape.
For its escalating moral collapse and the way money, violence, and secrecy poison everything.
A bleak detective story about obsession, failure, and the cost of chasing justice.
For the harsh wilderness survival element and the punishing physicality of its storytelling.
murder investigation, grief and trauma, reservation life, justice and vengeance, isolation, violence against women, survival in harsh weather, institutional failure
crime thriller, mystery, neo-western, snowbound, bleak, procedural, revenge, gritty, adult drama, atmospheric