The Windmill Massacre (2016)

“Terrifically Enjoyable EuroHorror With A Cast of Familiar Faces”

After its premiere at this year’s London Frightfest, Netherlands-filmed supernatural horror picture THE WINDMILL MASSACRE gets a UK DVD release from Kaleidoscope.

Amsterdam. Jennifer (Charlotte Beaumont from BROADCHURCH and JUPITER ASCENDING) is working illegally as an au pair. When she gets rumbled she has nowhere to go and ends up boarding the creepy clapped out Happy Holland tour bus. The driver isn’t too bothered that she hasn’t got a ticket, which means she really should be. 

         She’s joined in the bus by an irritable business man (Patrick Baladi from THE OFFICE and BODIES) and his son as well as a cocaine-addicted art enthusiast with a shady past (Noah Taylor from GAME OF THRONES), an ex-model trying to make it as a photographer (Fiona Hampton), a Japanese tourist mourning the death of his grandmother (Tanroh Ishida) and a marine (Ben Batt) who has done something unspeakably violent to a prostitute and is on the run just like Jennifer.

Off they all go into the land of polders and windmills!

The bus breaks down.

It gets dark.

There’s a windmill.

It’s not on any maps.

Every passenger has a terrible secret and soon, something horrible is picking them off one by one. 

         A very well-made mixture of Agatha Christie and Amicus anthology movie, THE WINDMILL MASSACRE is going to remind fans of classic EuroHorror of Jean Brismée’s 1971 Belgian horror THE DEVIL’S NIGHTMARE in which seven tourists find themselves on a bus driven by death himself, or Leon Klimovsky’s 1974 Spanish THE VAMPIRES’ NIGHT ORGY, where tourists on a bus encounter scary stuff in a grotty old village.

         Originally called THE WINDMILL the retitling is sensible seeing as a Dutch film with that title doesn’t immediately suggest a picture filled with gallons of stage blood (all CGI free - hooray!). WINDMILL MASSACRE is well written, well acted, well directed, and deserving of at least a couple of viewings to pick up on all the clever stuff at the beginning. The director, by the way, produced the equally entertaining FRANKENSTEIN’S ARMY a couple of years ago. Kaleidoscope’s DVD offers a director’s commentary as an extra, along with a short behind the scenes piece and sixteen minutes of ‘B-Roll’ footage. 

THE WINDMILL MASSACRE is out on UK DVD from Kaleidoscope on 3rd October 2016