Week 10 (Aug 23 – 29) – Mill Creek’s Mausoleum of Mumblegore: The indie wing of low-budget horror or the horror wing of low-budget indie.
pd187, who made this list, said “one of the only movies about cryptids/folkloric beings that “gets it.””
Wendigo serves as the second entry in writer-director Larry Fessenden’s thematic trilogy updating classic monster myths for modern, grounded indie cinema. It follows his eco-conscious Frankenstein riff No Telling and precedes his werewolf film Blackout, acting here as his distinctively grounded take on the traditional monster tale.
City-dwelling couple Kim (Patricia Clarkson) and George McLaren (Jake Weber) pack up their young son, Miles (Erik Per Sullivan), for a winter weekend getaway at a rented farmhouse in upstate New York. Their plans derail almost immediately when George accidentally strikes and kills a deer on a snowy backroad. This brings them into immediate, hostile conflict with a trio of local hunters tracking the animal, led by the aggressive and menacing Otis Stuckey (John Speredakos), who is furious over the ruined antlers.
As the family settles into their drafty, isolated rental—marked by pre-existing bullet holes and an eerie atmosphere—Otis begins lurking around the property like a peeping tom. Compounding the growing psychological strain, a mysterious Native American shopkeeper gifts young Miles a carved wooden figure representing the legend of the shape-changing Wendigo spirit of the surrounding woods. As tensions simmer between the stressed-out parents, Miles’s hyperactive imagination begins blurring the line between local human threats and ancient folklore. When a tragic flash of violence strikes the family during an afternoon outing, the legendary woodland spirit appears to awaken, culminating in a chilling and ambiguous reckoning.
The film features an unusually strong ensemble for a low-budget indie production. Patricia Clarkson was already a respected character actor on the rise before becoming an indie and mainstream staple (The Woods, The Station Agent); Jake Weber was fresh off Cell and would soon star in Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead; and young Erik Per Sullivan was recognized widely for his role as Dewey on TV’s Malcolm in the Middle. John Speredakos went on to become a staple of modern indie horror, appearing in genre favorites like The House of the Devil, I Sell the Dead and The Innkeepers.
Roger Ebert wrote, “Wendigo is a good movie with an ending that doesn’t work. While it was not working I felt a keen disappointment, because the rest of the movie works so well.”
You can watch this on Tubi.
