Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #74373 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-12-17
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 92 minutes

From The New Yorker
This unsettling and odd film, directed by Larry Fessenden, begins with a tight, sharp story about a New York City family who accidentally hit a deer late one night while driving upstate for a vacation. When a group of hunters arrive and are enraged by the death of their prey, the family's fear and paranoia is palpable, and a creepy "Deliverance"-like atmosphere takes hold. But when Fessenden begins to move his film into a more supernatural plane (the Wendigo is a forest spirit), the story collapses into mumbo-jumbo. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

From the Back Cover
As Kim and George (Patricia Clarkson and Jake Weber) and their son Miles (Erik Per Sullivan) drive to the Catskills to spend a weekend away, they accidentally hit a deer and are run off the road. But what seems to be a mere occurrence of misfortune marks the beginning of a terrifying journey, where myth becomes reality and an evil spirit, half man and half animal, haunts a small town...

Customer Reviews

The Shining meets Deliverance in the wake of Blair Witch.
A thirty-something couple embark on a trip to the country for a winter vacation with their young son, Miles. Nearly at their destination, they hit a large buck on the road, which brings them the unwanted attention of a creepy backwoods hunter. The incident also awakens the spirit of a Native American myth long overdue for movie-monster treatment, the Wendigo. As things get weirder and weirder, Miles' parents attempt to help him make sense of things, but in fact Miles is the only person privileged to the Wendigo's full mystery.

Director Larry Fessenden has fashioned an entertaining, if not fully polished, film. His characters and plot are adequate if rarely surprising, and he relies largely on innovative camera work to draw his audience in, a strategy that works more often than not. Fessenden uses time-lapse photography and well choreographed sequences of woodland still shots to bring the forest to life around his characters. He also demonstrates remarkable restraint in relying on simple suggestion and the expressive winter landscape to animate his Wendigo. If Fessenden's themes are a little too obvious to be convincing, and if he falls back on a few cliches along the way, the smart visuals at least make "Wendigo" a frequently engaging film.

Wendi-d that 90 minutes-go?
Big fan of atmosphere. The type of things that come to mind when looking for spooky, tangable tension in film could be; being chased by Jack Nicolson with axe in hand through a wintery maze or exploring the haunted interior of a large abandoned insane asylum via sweeping, drawn out camera pans accompanied by erie music. What 'Wendigo' gives the viewer is a truckload of atmosphere, but little else. The movie starts off in the right vein. The first 30 minutes are pretty good and I was thinking this could be a great horror flick. The rest was junk, and it keeps getting worse until the end of the movie when you don't know what just happened and why and what exactly was the point. Director Larry Fessenden Knows how to create a mood but doesn't know where to take it, leaving the plot flat and the characters boring. This is the type of film that might have benefitted from either some good CGI or leaving it up to the viewer's imagination as far as the title creature's appearence in the last ten minutes.... All and all a bit above most so-called horror films lurking out there, but just a bit.

Wendigo Falls Short
I want to start off by saying that I enjoy almost every horror/suspense/thriller movie ever made. As soon as I heard about Wendigo, I was instantly pulled in. I waited a year and a half for this DVD to come out, so I could finally see what all of the praise and commotion was about. Well, the story line is somewhat simple. Kim (Clarkson), George (Weber) and their eight-year old son, Miles (Sullivan), are city folk taking a weekend away at a friend's country farmhouse. On the way to the country farmhouse, they hit a buck that jumps out in front of them. Well, it just so happens that a creepy hunter named Otis and his 2 friends were following/hunting this buck. Otis clearly comes off as a psycho. Otis is quick to blame Geroge for hitting the buck and cracking its antler, like Gerorge had any other choice. Otis puts the buck out of its misery and continues to hassle Goerge on why he hit it. George explains that it was an accident that couldn't be avoided, but that's not a good enough reason as to what happened for Otis. Otis soon becomes extremely annoying before returning to his creepy state.

This incident supposedly awakens the spirit of the Wendigo, which is an evil, flesh-eating, spirit that is half man and half animal. Then the movie begins to drag. In fact the first hour doesn't really go anywhere. There is no building of tension, or answers given to what's going on. Onle a couple of creepy things happen in the first hour. One is Otis peeking in on Miles parents having sex in the living room, and two, the visions that Miles has throughout the first hour.

Miles finds relief from all of the traumatic events that have taken place in the form of a chimerical monster he invents, based on the legend that the Indian spirit told him. The Wendigo is an elemental spirit that appears in various forms, taking the shape of wind, trees, or a hungry deer-man with sharp antlers that roams the wilderness. All we are told is that it can fly at you suddenly without warning.

The last half hour of the movie is where everything comes full circle, and the movie begins to pick up pace. I don't want to give the ending away, but you do get to see the Wendigo or at least a couple forms of it. I also want to say that the movie relied a lot on shaking. Like in House on Haunted Hill(1999) when you see the doctor and he shakes violently. The father does this, and the Wendigo is mostly about this. In fact, most of the forest shots are jolted like this.

The best thing Fessenden pulls off in Wendigo is the amazing performance by Erik Per Sullivan (the youngest brother on Malcolm in the Middle). Sullivan's face conveys so much while seeming to do so little. You can see the fear in his eyes and even begin to understand where his character is coming from. There is a lot of promise in this young actor.

Although this movie takes a different pace from others, it lacks something that is needed to pull the audience in and keep their attention. Several people watching the movie got up and walked away because it was dragging so badly. When they came back 30 minutes later, it was like they never left. The story hadn't moved anywhere. Wendigo reminds me of the Blair Witch because the first hour is just beating around the bush, except the Blair Witch is building tension with the characters finding clues and realizing that they are lost and being hunted. In Wendigo, Miles is just seeing images. Also, the conversations between the adults become very repetative. I do have to say that for a low budget film, it was pretty good and that's why I gave it 2 stars. Mainly just for the last half hour. Though, Fessenden did his best with what he had to work with.

The ending leaves a lot to the imagination of the audience. If that is what you are looking for, then this is your kind of movie. There are some big suprises in the ending, well, one in particular that I didn't see coming. I would highly recommend watching Session 9 if you really want a dark, genuinely scary movie. Session 9 really has that creepy, hide your face, I can't believe that just happened kind of mood. It has to be one of the best horror movies of 2001 and I highly recommend the DVD.

As for the Wendigo DVD itself, it gets 4 stars in my book. Well, the cover is interesting to say the least. Special features on this disk include: 16:9 Widescreen Presentation, 5.1 Dolby Digital, 2.0 Dolby Surround, Searching for the Wendigo - Behind the Scenes Featurette, Director Commentary, Art Gallery, Trailer, Director and Cast Filmographies, Interview with Director Larry Fessenden, Subtitles: English and Spanish, Scene Selection, Digitally Mastered, and Interactive Menus. The feature running time is approx. 92 minutes. Rated R for a stong sex scene, language, and violent images.