Windfall Parents Guide — Things to watch out for in a psychological thriller
Netflix’s latest addition to its plethora of psycho thrillers, Windfall delves the audience into deep conversations with the occasional light humour until the final few minutes. The film follows around an unknown man who breaks into a tech billionaire’s empty vacation home until his stay is cut short when the mogul and his wife arrive for a last-minute getaway. What follows is a string of escape attempts, deep conversations, and a dramatic end in this 90-minute film.
Parental Rating
The movie is Rated R for strong language throughout and violence by the Motion Picture Association. A film that has been Rated R is unsuitable for anyone under the age of 17 as it contains many adult themes including bad language, intense or persistent violence, sexually-oriented nudity, drug abuse or other elements.
Netflix, the streaming service of this film rates the movie as suitable for children over the age of 15. However, parents are strongly advised to take this rating seriously and not let children under 17 watch this film.
Things parents should watch out for in this film:
Strong violence
Although the movie takes a very light tone with some quality dialogue and scenic views, there are many scenes of strong violence towards the end where many characters are killed.
After the kidnapper demands money and the husband gets frustrated by the constant emotional trauma, he threatens the kidnapper to prove his strength. The kidnapper fires a shot to the air where the kidnapped gardener panic and starts running. He then trips and falls on a window with a broken glass wedged to his throat. There is visible blood with intense music while the other characters are heard screaming using strong language.
In the final twist of the plot, the wife manages to break free using broken glass to cut the wires tied around her. She then takes a heavy sculpture and bludgeons the head of the kidnapper twice. Although the kidnapper’s head isn’t shown on screen, there is visible blood on the sculpture. The wife then shoots three bullets into the husband’s body, killing him too. The heavy visuals coupled with the intense soundtrack has the potential to trigger younger audiences and may cause emotional trauma.
Suggestive content and abusive language
At the start of the film, the billionaire lifts his wife and kisses her before asking her to take off her clothes, a request the wife refuses to do. On another occasion, the billionaire urges his wife to “do whatever it takes” to please the kidnapper and get out of this situation alive.
Profanities and threats are used throughout the entirety of the film. The husband is heard saying “I’m going to fucking kill him”, to the wife.
Windfall doesn’t have any nudity or flashing images, but it does have very strong visuals of blood, gore, and death. This lockdown style film has only 4 characters throughout, and the film had received mild praise from critics including a 55% rating on rotten tomatoes. However, this film would be the perfect way for parents to spend a very boring day without any children.
