Screen to Scream: The Wind and The Hunger

Horror often involves isolation. If not specifically about isolation, then authors and story creators will put their protagonists in situations that cuts them off from their fellow humans, often physically separated by the environment. While the fact of our digitally connected world may stretch the believability of this isolation (how many places are too far away from cell towers?), this isolation is often internal as well. This is the case for two tales of people foolishly following manifest destiny: the movie The Wind: Demons of the Prairie as well as Alma Katsu's novel The Hunger.
Both movie and book take place on the American prairie and both are relatively understated horror (cannibalism and child death notwithstanding). Not exactly buckets of blood, but both have plenty of foreboding atmosphere. The Wind features Lizzy and her husband Isaac, settlers who have learned to survive the desolate landscape. Soon, they make the acquaintance of another couple Emma and Gideon, who have left a life of comfort behind. The four become friends, but Lizzy hears thing in the howling wind. She sees how what lurks out there affects Emma and it soon starts to affect Lizzie as well. She begins to have her own supernatural experiences while her husband is away and soon her trust in Isaac erodes. There are indeed demons on this prairie and those demons have infiltrated Lizzie's mind and work steadily to destroy her faith and the life she has built with her husband. Told in a non-chronological narrative, the story jumps around in places, meaning you'll have to pay attention to get the whole story, but even if you watch diligently, the movie may leave you with more questions than answers, particularly as to the reality of the events that took place.
The Hunger is a book similar in subject and tone to The Wind. Both books take place on the prairie and both books feel free to play with narrative structure. While The Wind jumps around from one part of the story to the next, Katsu's reimagining of the Donner Party pulls in a lot of epistolary examples from letters and journal entries to explore the lives of the party members before they made their fateful journey. Another similarity both book and movie share is the use of approaching tragedy to create tension. Even readers who haven't read about the Donner Party will have an idea what ultimately befell the settlers in The Hunger, and The Wind starts straight away with a blood-soaked Lizzy and a husband desperate to know what happened. Katsu's book also forces the reader to pay attention as she introduces many characters and backstories, many of which based on real people. However, this plethora of characters shouldn't dissuade readers from picking this book up after watching The Wind. Katsu is deft at not only fleshing out these different characters but tying up their tragic stories by the book's end.