(Credit: Netflix)

Have you ever watched something and just felt… off? Like you are not sure what’s going on, but you know it is not good, and you are too far in to stop now. That’s High Plains Drifter for you.

Yes, technically that’s the whole vibe. You don’t get a welcome buildup when you start this movie. All you get is a stranger riding into a town that probably deserves whatever’s coming.

Clint Eastwood directed this one. And he plays the stranger, too, but he doesn’t save anyone. That’s the fun part. Or maybe the terrifying part. Either way, you watch him roll in, and everything just falls apart from there. People start squirming, and secrets start creeping up. The town looks like it’s got ghosts in every corner, and this guy might be one of them.

And please do not confuse High Plains Drifter for the type of Western where you cheer when someone draws their gun. Here you go, all like, “Wait, are we supposed to be on his side?” Because this man does not act like a protector. He is not there to help. He is there to make sure they remember. And it gets messy.

There is this whole backstory to it, actually. It turns out the town did something awful, and they think they can fix it by hiring muscle. What they get instead is a reckoning. And Eastwood doesn’t raise his voice or explain anything. He just starts twisting the knife.

He paints the town red. Not metaphorically. Actual red. He makes them rename it “Hell”. That’s not even a spoiler because it happens midway, and somehow, things get darker after that. It is also not about the outlaws coming back. It is about the people who let them in the first time and then acted surprised when everything burned.

And there is something about the way it is shot because you feel trapped watching it. The town is surrounded by nothing. No hills, no forests, just flat, dry land like a punishment. Like nowhere to run even if you wanted to.

And to make things even more tense, there is barely any music. Just wind and silence. And when the violence hits, it hits hard. Because this place? It earned it.

After all of this, if you have some hopes for the ending, let us warn you not to get your hopes up because there is no proper resolution. Don’t expect clarity. You will sit there staring at the screen, wondering what just happened and whether the town got what it deserved or if they got off easy. And that’s the point. You are not supposed to feel good. You are supposed to feel unsettled.

So if you have watched a lot of Westerns and think you know what to expect, watch High Plains Drifter. It spits on expectations. It plays like a ghost story and a revenge tale and something else that doesn’t quite fit in a box. And Clint Eastwood is not playing a cowboy here. He is playing a question. One you won’t stop thinking about for days.