WINTERTIDE – directed by John Barnard – SPOILERS ⁓

It is the ninety-eighth consecutive day of night, and dawn is not coming anytime soon. Something must have changed the Earth’s axial tilt, because no place remains dark for that long now. Tromsø, Norway has the longest polar night and that runs from November to January. We are told that cities are nearly empty. Volunteer patrols work to maintain security.

One assumes that people have temporarily migrated to somewhere the sun still shines. Long periods of night imply long stretches of daytime, hence the license plate that says “Land of Sunshine” and has a maple leaf in the middle.

Some who remain contract a previously unknown disease which might be a response to being kept in the dark for long periods of time. The illness, which has no name, affects the cerebral cortex, and turns people into zombies. (They are referred to as strays, but their behaviour is zombie-like, though they do not eat brains.) Electrical lights flicker and buzz at the approach of strays.

Medications to help with the long wait for sunrise are encouraged and possibly required. Two pharmaceuticals are mentioned by name: Solgar Glycine, and something called Dormarin Natare.

This is the story of Beth (Niamh Carolan) whom we meet in the middle of a sleepless night as she heads out on patrol. Beth is a Patrol Volunteer. Her mother was one of the first strays. After her father Eric (John B Lowe) disappeared, Beth remained in the darkness to look for him.

She meets her best friend Natalie (Solange Sookram) at a tavern where Bruno (Josh Strait) plays guitar for a sparse and inattentive audience. Why Natalie has not fled south is a mystery, but she likes hanging out with Beth and eating potato salad, the smell of which Beth finds offensive. (Natalie is the only person we see eating anything at all.)

Convinced that the prescribed medications are not good for people, Beth does not take them. She does get quite a bit of sleep, though, and her intense dreams seem (to her) almost undistinguishable from reality. In those dreams, her doppelganger attacks those she sleeps with, applying a kind of reverse resuscitation that renders them exhausted, and well on the way to strayhood. That part seems real enough, since the local detention centre (where strays are confined) is filled with Beth’s ex-lovers.

After helping corral a violent stray who turns out to not be her dad, she goes dancing and meets Tabitha (Colleen Furlan). Her doppelganger drains Tabitha and before it disappears, a nasty rash appears on the double’s upper left thigh. It does not appear anywhere on the “real” Beth, or on Tabitha.

Beth suggests that Tabby, who seems exhausted and depressed, should take her meds. “What’s the point?” Tabby says listlessly. “Darkness – interrupted by lamps. Darkness and lamps. Is it funny? It’s funny, isn’t it?”

When Beth dreams another double that sucks most of the life out of Derek (Jesse Nobess), that same sort of rash appears on the double’s left shoulder blade. Again, no one but the dreamshadow is affected by the rash.

Then the lecherous snowplow driver Jason (Darcy Fehr) hooks up with Beth, and reacts to her dream double by generating his own doppelganger that wrestles with Beth’s, but loses. Before vanishing, Jason’s dreamshadow warns Beth: “You have to stop. They’re coming for you. What you’re taking from them, eventually they’ll want it back.”

Isolation sends people astray, causing them to interfere with electrical devices (such as those that transmit mass media). Beth’s father copes by becomes a hermit, and adopts a questionable philosophy. “Connection,” he says, “is the problem. The only way to stay safe is to stay away from each other.” Beth takes the opposite approach, but at heart she is also a hermit, and all her connections succumb to the beast in her dreams. Her one genuine connection is with Natalie. Only when that is threatened does she wake up.

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WINTERTIDE can be streamed on TUBI, and is available on DVD and Blu-ray.