The Age of Commercialism

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

I had to double check the date on this one, as i swore it said 2001. Why then, does Wendigo look like it was recorded off of a late 70s VHS Horror Anthology? The acting is fine, but everything else is from bad to worse. Visual effects scream shoestring budget, to the point of why even bother. Writing is awful, as someone seems to have attempted over an hour of pure character development, without anything actually ever happening. By the time the climax rolls around, my brain has all but checked out. I honestly don't know who this is made for. Most definitely not for me.

Wendigo is a smart and enjoyably creepy movie, right up until an ending that's so atrocious it not only makes you retroactively hate the film but also makes you wish writer/director Larry Fessenden had never been born.A tense mixture of family drama, rural menace and supernatural threat, this is the story of the McLaren family spending the weekend at some friends' country home. George (Jake Weber) is the father, a good man full of anger at the world and at himself. Kim (Patricia Clarkson) is the mother, a psychiatrist who feels there's something wrong with her family but isn't sure what to do about it. Miles (Erik Per Sullivan) is the son, a quiet boy with a tender heart and delicate spirit. Driving into the country, the McLarens run over a deer and get stuck in the snow. Three hunters emerge from the woods chasing after the deer. They include Otis Stookey (John Speredakos), an unsettling redneck who is not only angry at the McLarens for hitting the deer and damaging its valuable antlers but appears angered by the McLarens' very existence.Getting back on the road, George, Kim and Miles make it to their friends' home where they not only discover a bullet hole, they find Otis turning up in his pickup truck. When they head into town for supplies, they find Otis there. Even when George and Kim get a little frisky at night on the living room couch, Otis is there watching through the window. Compounding all that, Miles begins having awful visions. At first they're of Otis, but then they become about a horrible forest spirit called the Wendigo. As this normal family just tries to have a weekend for themselves, you can fell real and magical terrors hiding out of sight, waiting to leap out and tear at them. An innocent bit of sledding by George and Miles goes tragically wrong…and that's when the thrice-damned ending kicks in and leaves viewers wanting to kick in their TV screens.Though he uses a few too many camera tricks for my taste, writer/director Fessender starts out doing a marvelous job with Wendigo. He creates this easily believable, deeply likable family unit and eases them slowly into an increasingly disturbing setting until you're on the edge of your seat, waiting for what's going to happen to them. Jake Weber does a great job playing a man whose unacknowledged unhappiness seeps into his relationship with his son and his wife. Erik Per Sullivan makes Miles into an actual child and not some overly precious Hollywood midget. Patricia Clarkson is domestically seductive as a woman trying to deal with an unhappy husband and a sensitive son, while also being worthy of induction into the Milf Hall of Fame.There's so much to like about Wendigo…and then there's that ending. It's like a gourmet meal that finishes with a bowl full of maggot-infested vomit. This conclusion isn't just bad on its own, though it is. Everyone who watches this film could tell you exactly what the ending should have been, an ending that would have pleased and satisfied everyone who enjoyed all that came before it. Not only does writer/directer Fessenden not give the audience that ending, he gives us the complete opposite of it. And he doesn't do it to make any thematic point or for any reason other than pretentious creative orneriness. It's like Fessenden is one of the independent filmmakers who can't stand the thought of making a crowd-pleasing movie, so he welded on an ending that urinates all over the viewers.After the first 75 minutes of this film, I was really to heartily recommend people watch it. After the last 15 minutes, I would not only urge you to avoid Wendigo but I would encourage you to never watch any other film directed by Larry Fessenden.

I had never heard of Larry Fessenden before but judging by this effort into writing and directing, he should keep his day job as a journeyman actor. Like many others on here, I don't know how to categorize this film, it wasn't scary or spooky so can't be called a horror, the plot was so wafer thin it can't be a drama, there was no suspense so it can't be a thriller, its just a bad film that you should only see if you were a fan of the Blair witch project. People who liked this film used words, like "ambiguity" and complex and subtle but they were reading into something that wasn't there. Like the Blair witch, people got scared because people assumed they should be scared and bought into some guff that it was terrifying. This movie actually started off well with the family "meeting" the locals after hitting a deer. It looked like being a modern day deliverance but then for the next 45 minutes, (well over half the film), nothing happened, the family potted about their holiday home which was all very nice and dandy but not the slightest bit entertaining. It was obvious the locals would be involved in some way at some stage but Essendon clearly has no idea how to build suspense in a movie. Finally, when something does happen, its not even clear how the father was shot, how he dies, (the nurse said his liver was only grazed), and all the time this wendigo spirit apparently tracks down the apparent shooter in a very clumsy way with 3rd grade special effects. The film is called Wendigo but no attempt is made to explain it in any clear way, the film ends all muddled and leaves you very unsatisfied, i would have bailed out with 15 minutes to go but I wanted to see if this movie could redeem itself. It didn't.

This movie is S-L-O-W. Spent most of the movie actually waiting for it to 'begin'.The setting was bleak, the script was bleak, the cinematography was bleak, the plot was bleak, the budget was low (not that all low budget movies are bad, but this one had no redeeming features).The plot was more consumed with a vengeful, slightly deranged hunter than the actual Wendigo which made a very brief appearance toward the end of the movie. This in itself was disappointing as this 'Wendigo' was just a bizarre mix of a tree and a stag. Everything about the movie was uninspiring.The parents of the little boy appeared to be rather aloof and at times seemed completely detached from their son. Whether this was down to bad acting or a bad script I'm not sure, but it only heightened my disappointment and boredom levels.There was no food for thought, nothing to pique an interest. With no real intrigue or chill factor, this movie creaked along so painfully, you just couldn't care less what happened by the end.Wendigo's ambiance reminds me of the dull movie shown at the awards ceremony toward the end of 'Mr Bean's Holiday': a movie which is artistic and nonsensical, trying too hard to to be deep and meaningful, but coming across as pretentious and boring.I would never want to watch this again. I only watched it to the end in the vain hope that something interesting might happen ... but it didn't.