Why ‘Dark Winds’ Is A Perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes Scored Netflix Show

Netflix’s Navajo noir Dark Winds has won plaudits for its heart-wrenching performances and riveting supernatural storyline but it is also reeling in the returns in a way which many other productions can’t match.

It’s no secret that many of Netflix’s biggest blockbusters are made in the United Kingdom. In 2019 the streamer struck a deal to rent large parts of Shepperton Studios in Surrey, around an hour south west of London. Two years later it doubled the size of this base and there was good reason for it.

The U.K. government gives film makers a cash reimbursement equivalent to as much as 25.5% of the money they spend in the country and Netflix has made the most of this. Between 2020 and 2023 it invested almost $6 billion in the U.K. shooting shows and movies there even though many of them have little to no connection with the country. Indeed, as this report explained, one of its most-anticipated movies this year, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, recreated a leafy suburb of upstate New York in London rather than filming in the Big Apple itself.

The team behind Dark Winds took a different approach. The psychological thriller is set in the 1970s and follows two police officers in the Navajo Nation, a sprawling Indigenous reservation largely located in New Mexico. The two Navajo peace keepers are forced to question their spiritual beliefs when they search for clues in a grisly double murder case tied in to a conspiracy involving human and drug smuggling across the Southwest region. No corners were cut when it came to authenticity.

The show’s executive producers include the late Robert Redford and George R. R. Martin, author of the A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novels which were adapted into HBO’s blockbuster Game of Thrones series. They ensured that Dark Winds has a mostly Native American cast but that’s just the start.

In order to get the best performances out of the cast, the production team didn’t want them acting in front of a green screen or a set thousands of miles away from the location it was based on. Filming in the Land of Enchantment was a must and although this wasn’t as lucrative as shooting in the U.K., it still had a magic touch on the show’s bottom line.

New Mexico pays production companies between 25% and 40% of their eligible spend in the state from an annual war chest of $160 million. Three studios are exempt from this cap – 828 Productions, NBCUniversal and Netflix which wasn’t behind Dark Winds even though it screens it. Since the show debuted in 2022 each season has been screened first on AMC with the third premiering in March this year before dropping on Netflix last week as part of its deal with the network.

In addition to shooting on location in Santa Fe, Dark Winds was made at Camel Rock Studios, the first Indigenous-owned film and television studio in the United States. It is owned and operated by the people of Tesuque Pueblo who also benefit from the production team renting tribal lands. They also employed 200 New Mexico crew members, 280 extras and 90 of the principal New Mexico actors.

This eye for authenticity comes right from the top as another of the executive producers is Chris Eyre, a Native American who is an enrolled citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.

“It’s critically important to all of us that we represent the culture correctly,” he said. “We want to make sure we’re reflecting as much as we can of Navajo culture in the best way.” It paid off.

Acting against the sweeping sandy landscapes yielded blockbuster performances earning each season a perfect 100% critics score on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

New Mexico has been an even bigger winner thanks to the wages paid to crew and actors along with indirect spending at hotels, restaurants and other businesses. The New Mexico Film Office adds that it has also seen the show “spark tourism into the state.” That doesn’t mean it is guaranteed to have a happy ending.

In 2022, the lockdown-induced streaming boom led to production expenditure in New Mexico hitting its highest level of $855.4 million, a 36% increase on 2021. However, in the latest fiscal year it fell to $323 million “primarily due to an industry-wide contraction in productions,” according to the New Mexico Film Office.

It adds that “in recent years, there has been a drop in film and television spending statewide and nationally. Much of the demand for this content has shifted to international markets, which have offered far more lucrative incentives, as well as lower labor costs, favorable currency exchange rates, and government investment.”

President Trump is trying to reverse that and in May rocked Hollywood with the announcement that a 100% tariff will be applied to movies entering the U.S. that are produced in “foreign lands”. Although this has yet to be implemented, it hasn’t been forgotten.

In late September Trump wrote on social media that “in order to solve this long time, never ending problem, I will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States.” Dark Winds continues to be one of the exceptions as its fourth season was again filmed in Santa Fe in spring and summer this year. If more film makers shared this desire for authenticity the curtain it could stop the curtain from coming down on the U.S. film industry.