Wendigo

Title: Wendigo
Director: Larry Fessenden
Cast: Jake Weber, Patricia Clarkson, Erik Per Sullivan
Year: 2001
MPAA: Rated R for a strong sex scene, language and violent images.
Date of Review: May 29, 2008


***HEAVY SPOILERS AHEAD***

It’s hard to explain the feeling of joy someone like myself derives from seeing genre cinema treated with respect. Over the past few years this has been happening more and more in the world of big-budget blockbusters, but I still find that the real “gold” is found in the smaller films. You know, like that one you’ve passed by a million times at the video store - it’s got a rating of 6-something on IMDb, it has good critical reviews and a nifty cover, but you just can’t muster up the courage to take a chance with it. Or maybe you needed to see Cloverfield just one more time, for the seventh time. This was me with Larry Fessenden’s Wendigo - a movie I had heard equally good and bad things about, and had been curious about for years, yet I never got around to watching it. Until last night. And I smacked myself on the head for not having seen it before.

Telling several different stories at once, this supernatural horror fable centres on a family of three who go to a cottage in snow-covered upstate New York and are simultaneously hunted by a psychotic hillbilly, and haunted by the Native American spirit known as the “wendigo”. This all happens amidst problems in the family structure - George, the father (played by Jake Weber) is having trouble connecting with his son and really being a part of the boy’s life, and Kim (played by Patricia Clarkson) sees this and is beginning to resent George for it. Their son, Miles (Erik Per Sullivan), is the only one who is truly aware of the supernatural occurrences around the cottage, which seem to be created (or exasperated) by his possession of a small wendigo figure he received from a mysterious Native man at a local corner store. As all of these conflicts converge, many different layers can be pealed back, in a film that has a lot to say about myths, human nature, and the way the world works.

Fessenden has said that many of his films (especially this one) deal with how myths and legends come to be. Their purpose is simple - to explain the unexplainable. To give comfort and a sense of familiarity to situations that are extraordinary, or too horrible to see truth in. Wendigo does this, with the young boy’s fantasies about the wendigo spirit being his own way of dealing with events which will eventually lead to the death of his father. In a very powerful final shot, Miles is seen clenching the wendigo idol so hard that his hand is bleeding - he has come to believe in this story (told to him by the aforementioned mysterious Native) so strongly that he has passed the point of being able to accept reality. But how much of it was imagined by Miles, and how much of it involved real, supernatural forces working on the side of nature?

In an ingenious twist, Fessenden leads us to believe that the wendigo is a creature of evil (or at least, of great destructive power). The story that the Native tells to young Miles makes the wendigo out to be an unforgiving monster, which devours everything it encounters and has immense power. But after George is shot by a (possibly) stray bullet while sledding with Miles, he is found on the doorstep of the cottage, and cannot remember how he got there. “It was like a wind carried me here” he says, reminding us of the Native’s story of how the wendigo would often manifest itself in the form of a strong wind. We then see the father from the point of view of the young boy, lying there on the ground helpless and hurt, with the wendigo beast towering over him. It is not a stance of hostility, though, but rather of comfort and shelter - the wendigo did its best to save the man’s life.

Here we see the carrying out of the film’s sense of justice - George was shot by the psycho hillbilly, Otis (played by John Speredakos), and since saving the man’s life was beyond the wendigo’s power, it uses its greater power of destruction to seek vengeance for this wrongdoing. This ties into the theme we are shown at the very beginning of the film, before any mention of the supernatural is made - that of man vs. man. That is, the “civilized” city man, versus the “uncivilized” country man. The very beginning incident of the family car hitting a buck, leading to a conflict between the family and the local hunters who wanted the buck’s antlers, could be a film unto itself. The city man, who has never had to fend for himself in the country, has presumably never shot a gun or done any hunting of any kind, feels threatened by the archetypal country man, whose simple existence is much “manlier” (plus, he’s got a big gun). This also deepens the film’s justice theme, as the country man has committed the greatest universal crime - murder - and the wendigo must even the playing field, regardless of the fact that the wrongdoer is the one who lives closest to the land.


Wendigo gives us a lot to think about, and it’s too bad that it does have some problems. Casting a child actor is risky - more often than not, they just aren’t good. And when one is found who is good, they become so overused that they are annoying regardless of their talent. Erik Per Sullivan just wasn’t convincing as the son, and many of the frightening moments (such as a late night when Miles is sitting in bed and imagines a little girl coming out of his closet) he looks as if he is on the verge of laughter. Similarly, some of the family dynamics are a little grating. While it can be seen in their one-on-one scenes together, the supposed tension between George and Miles is missing completely when the whole family is together, and their happy, playful nature is almost “Brady Bunch”-esque in its believability.

It’s certainly not perfect, but Wendigo provides genuine thought, and looks at both spiritual and physical planes of our existence on this Earth. As Fessenden also says in the interview on the DVD, with all of our scientific knowledge and incredible advances in technology, we still don’t really have any idea how our world works. We have theories based on facts, but facts change with time and scrupulous analysis. The idea that a force like the wendigo could be out there pursuing natural justice is an interesting one. Just the fact that this film has left me with this much to ponder makes it one of the more worthwhile viewing experiences I have had in the last while, and is a great addition to the “indie horror gems” shelf that I am constantly adding to.

8 / 10

Iron Man

Title: Iron Man
Director: Jon Favreau
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow
Year: 2008
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and brief suggestive content.
Date of Review: May 3, 2008

I’ve always been more of a DC guy. This probably stems from the time at which I was most into superheroes - the 1990s, when comic books were at an all time low with regards to quality writing. I wanted so badly to like “X-Men”, because Wolverine was so cool and I generally just loved the concept...but every time I picked up an issue of the book, it was a damn soap opera. I just couldn’t get into the storylines, and I (like every other young boy) wanted action. That’s probably why “Iron Man” was the one Marvel hero I could really get behind. He had his bouts of soap opera madness, but nothing like his mutant friends. His books were always more about the action, and the drama which could be derived from it. So it was with this young boy’s sense of anticipation that I went to the theatre to see Marvel’s most recent film, Iron Man, and I was given a hefty dose of nostalgia, and a genuinely great movie to boot.

Robert Downey Jr. is deserving of all the accolades he has been receiving for his turn as Tony Stark, and people will be talking about this performance for a long time - probably until the next movie comes out. He plays Stark as an arrogant, womanizing, heavy drinker, but does it with such charisma and charm that he’s possibly the most likable comic book hero we have seen on the silver screen thus far. His sense of humor and his teenage selfishness complement each other nicely, and while his toys are all A.I.-fueled high-tech gadgets, in the end he is just a boy who discovers he can make himself into a hero in his own garage. And once the suit is complete and Iron Man begins his work, the action is exhilarating and surprisingly tasteful in its execution.

The movie really shines in it’s dialogue, though. While light on narrative - a fairly standard origin story and “hero’s quest” type plot structure is at its core - the characters surrounding Stark are rich and full of life (due in no small part to the top notch cast). Director Jon Favreau has said that he encouraged the cast to ad lib as much as they wanted, and the improvisations are spot on for the characters being played. The interaction between Stark and his various maintenance robots is hilarious, and the forbidden romance between him and his secretary Pepper Potts (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) rings true due to the snappy back-and-forth occurring between them in all of their scenes together.

Iron Man, like any truly great summer movie, isn’t just mindless entertainment. It has a heart, a soul, and a conscience. It is a film about responsibility - not in the way Spider-Man was, but in its own way. Learning to take responsibility for your past actions, and choosing to right your own wrongs rather than let someone else do it for you is a central theme in the film. And with its modern-day relevance - having it take place largely in Afghanistan, involving middle eastern war criminals whose lives were destroyed by the same American weapons which they now use in their crusade for vengeance - it’s quite a wake-up call to the USA to take responsibility, itself, for a conflict which is largely (if not entirely) their fault.

And while I would not be reluctant in any way to call this the best superhero movie since Batman Begins (and in turn one of the best ever), it is not without its flaws. Perhaps my own fandom has created a bias, but the strength of Iron Man’s character really warranted a more rousing musical score. Having the score rely largely on heavy guitar riffs is great in concept (I mean, heavy metal music for Iron Man seems appropriate, right?) but none of it really felt unique. The music seemed like it could have been used in just about any other modern action film. Something more iconic, like Danny Elfman’s Batman theme or John Williams’ Superman, could have added so much.

There are also a few lapses in logic which were not distracting, but certainly noticeable. The largest of these logical flaws takes place shortly after Stark has escaped from his Afghani prison, and has left all the pieces of his original creation behind (the crude “Mark 1" suit). Once back on American soil, everyone keeps asking him about his brilliant escape and how he pulled it off - would the government not have been quick to collect those giant machine parts that he simply left in the sand for the bad guys to come back and collect? Would they not have been more interested in collecting this brilliant walking death-machine than, well, rescuing Tony Stark himself?

Logical shortcomings aside, Iron Man is an absolute blast. The characters and dialogue are witty and smartly written, the action sequences (though few and far between) are incredible, and it finds a perfect balance between the brooding, dark tones of something like Batman Begins, and the too-silly-for-its-own-good nature of the Fantastic Four series.

This is the way a comic book movie should be handled, and let’s hope it does well enough at the box office to force Robert Downey Jr. To make good on his promise of a few sequels.

8.5 / 10