Wendigo

I believe this movie needs to be watched through the eyes of the boy, Miles. He has traveled with his Mom and Dad to a strange old house out in nowhere land, and has to sleep in a large room by himself. To me, the real horror in this film is the woods, and the darkness. The boy has been told about the legend, or folklore of the Wendigo. It roams the woods and fields looking for its next victim. In his bed the boy looks through old books which show pictures of Indian cultures which practice the rituals of wearing animal heads and masks. Everything around him is strange and creepy. I specifically remember long ago riding in the back seat of the family car on cold, dark winter nights, just like Miles was doing. Just me back there and Mom and Dad up front. Driving down a country road at dark, especially just as darkness has fallen, I could see the trees and woods as we passed by them, but just a short distance into the wood line, it turned completely black. The cold and snow added to the chill that would come over me. My boy brain could imagine that someone, or some thing, was in there watching us pass. If our car broke down here, we've had it. We would all be torn to pieces by whatever is out there, watching us. It may even be a large black wolf, and I imagined I could see only two yellow eyes, just into the trees. Cars did not have automatic devices back then, and I would slowly reach over to be sure the door was locked. I could not wait to get home and into my warm cozy bed in my own safe room. I personally really liked the extremely moody photography in this film and the snowy, dark, late evening and night scenes. To me, that is the real scare and even now gives me chills to think about. The Wendigo itself is almost a side story to the isolation, darkness and the unknown of the woods at night. If nothing else, I like this film because it introduced me to, or reminded me of, a wonderful old poem by Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". I printed that poem and hung it by a window in my house where I look out onto the woods out back.

Larry Fessenden's Wendigo is a film that has stuck with me since I saw it years ago, a glowing textbook example on how to create chilly, effective and engrossing horror on a minimal budget, to maximum creepy effect. Set in the snowy drifts of Upstate New York in the dead of winter, a stressed out family heads up to a remote cottage for a rest. Following an accident, a dead deer and the subsequent altercations with angry locals, things take a turn for the supernatural as some dark force takes up residence on the cottage grounds, shaking the family to their collective core. There's an old legend out there about a spirit called Wendigo, a vengeful ghost that latches onto traumatic events, haunting those involved often right to their graves. These poor people awakened it, and it won't go away. Jake Weber, Patricia Clarkson and Dewey from Malcolm In The Middle are great as these folks, compelling in their sense of confusion and dread. The creature is rarely seen, save for a single stark image that I haven't forgotten since: after the car accident, the child looks a ways up the road and sees it standing there, a freaky spectre, all shadows, antlers and such. Spooky stuff.

As a character-driven chiller, Wendigo is a thoroughly satisfying film, though not one that successfully plays out its early promise. From the establishing shot of a young family driving a winding road into the darkened wilderness I was immediately reminded of The Shining. And if Wendigo doesn't quite display that films polished visuals, it certainly borrows the themes of isolation and familial tension, especially patriarchal, that Kubrick examined so well. Cult director Larry Fessenden has gone back to horror movie basics to achieve a palpable tension in his film: black shadows in every corner of a very-underlit rural house, creaky floorboards, shrieking nighttime winds. His film starts to unravel when he pushes to far - the appearance of the Wendigo, an Indian spirit that travels on the wind, is at first frightening but ultimately overplayed; Fessenden feels compelled to reveal the monster in an extended attack sequence on the films hillbilly badguy, and in doing so belies the slyness with which we had so successfully frightened us up to that point. The ending is particularly murky, both visually and narratively, feeling rushed and a little self-consciously obscure. The cast is uniformly solid: Jake Weber and Patricia Clarkson as the yuppies-in-peril are very real, and 'Malcolm In The Middle' youngster Erik Per Sullivan provides the perfect conduit for audience fear and apprehension. The print I viewed at the recent AFM conference was particularly grainy and I am unsure as to whether this was due to the transfer from HDV-to-film or whether Fessenden shot it like that. Regardless, it proved very effective in creating a sense of dread and foreboding, especially in the early twilight scenes. Also nice to see a film that revels in its ability to scare, not always winking at the audience in a self-mocking "Scream" sort-of way. More often than not lately irony and revisionism have gotten in the way of a good fright, which Wendigo certainly provides.

I like horror movies a lot and have seen a great many of them. I rented this movie with misgivings which were, alas, justified. For approximately the first hour, very little happened. A couple & small child driving along the woods hit a deer then encounter some hunters, one of whom has a screw loose. Words are exchanged and the family eventually gets unstuck from the ditch they ran into after hitting the deer. After that, for about an hour, not much happens.

A horror movie, above all, should not be boring, and this one is. All that happens occurs in the last 1/2 hour.

The story is about a man who along with his wife n son takes a weekend off n head to an isolated house to cut off from the city n work life stress. On the way, the man hits a deer who was running away from some hunters. After being towed n reaching the house, the man notices bullet stuck in the wall n a hole in the window. The next morning the family goes to a store where the boy is given an idol of wendigo, a so called creature by a Red Indian...... This film is utterly boring. Nothing happens. Most of the scenes r shot in the dark n to add to the turmoil, the shaky cam stuff is even more irritating. Ther is zero kills, no gore, tension n suspense is lacking n forget bah the lousy sex scene with nada nudity. Generous with 5 cos of decent acting n a lil eerie atmosphere. Saw this recently for the first time.