October Gale 2015

Helen Matthews, a widow still grieving the loss of her husband, makes a solitary choice to revisit the boat-access island cottage that she and her husband used as a vacation retreat. Against her son’s wishes, she hits the Georgian Bay waters early one morning to stock the house with groceries, only to have the engine fail miles from home. A quick radio call to marine services brings a promise of repairs in a few days, and she’s left stranded back at her dock while her boat is tended to.

On the second night, a thunderstorm stirs the quiet of the island. Helen discovers a strange skiff moored at her pier, with a suspicious bloodstain on the rear seat. When she returns to the cabin, blood marks the door and a stranger named Will has crawled inside, injured and desperate for help. Helen, who is also a trained doctor, takes control: she surgically treats a shoulder wound, removing a pistol round and stabilizing him. Will is evasive about what happened and insists on leaving, but he’s too weak to move. Helen chooses to keep him in the house, hoping for answers and safety.

A local handyman, Al, stops by to offer odd jobs and quickly becomes a volatile factor. He has spotted the boat Will used to arrive. Will warns Helen not to let Al inside, but she chooses hospitality over fear and asks Al to tow both boats to shore. Instead, Al unties them and sails off, leaving Helen to fend for herself. In a moment of danger, she dives into the water to stop the drifting boats, nearly drowning, until Will swims out to pull her to safety. The recovery is intimate: Will helps her out of the water and, later, into the shower where a quiet closeness leads to a kiss.

As days pass, Will reveals the truth of his predicament: he killed a man in a bar fight by accident, and the father of that man is now pursuing him with lethal resolve. In parallel, Helen shares the sorrow of her own loss—the death of her husband, James, the previous October during a storm. The two of them form a fragile alliance, determined to survive and to shield one another from pursuit.

They pool resources, searching the house for ammunition and even removing the dock to lessen exposure. Al returns later with Tom, and the hunt for Will intensifies in the surrounding woods. In a confrontation, Helen strikes Tom but is quickly overpowered as Tom wields a shotgun. Tom reveals a painful family history: Will was his adopted son, raised to look after Tom’s biological son. Will killed that son after an act of violence against a woman, though Tom intones it with ambiguous certainty. When Al interrupts, a lethal misfire follows and Tom shoots Al, escalating the danger.

Will returns, and a tense, quiet exchange unfolds between him and Tom on the cottage porch. Inside, Helen recalls a crucial detail: Tom had earlier ejected the cartridge from the rifle and believed he had disarmed her, but Helen spotted the cartridge on the floor and managed to load the rifle again. Will apologizes, and Tom lifts the gun with the intent to end Will’s threat. Helen fires first, killing Tom and breaking the immediate danger.

The following day, Helen goes into town to report what happened and encounters what she believes is her dead husband, James. After a brief conversation, it becomes clear that the figure is Will in disguise, offering something more complicated than closure. He asks Helen to leave with him, to start anew away from the life she has known. The film closes on Helen’s interior struggle, balancing the pull of a possible future with Will against the pull of her old life in Toronto, leaving her to weigh whether to return to normalcy or to take a chance on a new path with him.