9. Dead Man's Burden (2013)
On a budget that wouldn't cover a week of The Lone Ranger's catering, Jared Moshe's Dead Man's Burden is still a mightily effective Western. Wade McCurry returns to his New Mexico home after his father dies, after years living away post-Civil War. There resides the only family he has left - his sister Martha - and her new husband Heck. Only we see Martha gun down their father in the film's opening scene, yet it seems she's set on pulling the wool over Wade's eyes for reasons unknown. And it doesn't sit right that Wade has been away so long in the first place... Beginning as an attractive mystery, the film's source of power is in its silences, the sprawling, lawless landscape both beautifully still and quietly unsettling - a perfect evocation of the Old West. Amidst the gorgeous cinematography sits themes of betrayal, greed and the scarring effects of war; the Civil War is long over here, but still people are dying for it. Making something out of very little, Dead Man's Burden proves that, even if the funding pool for Westerns ever dried up completely, the genre could still continue.