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