WENDIGO

CAUTION–SPOILERS NEAR END

     Like so many movies I wrote about, Wendigo sets its sights high.   It refuses to follow commercial formulas.  Not that it
succeeds at everything it tries to do.  Many of its special effects are unconvincing.  The story may seem confused, or too ambiguous. Others will find it pretentious.

     What does Wendigo hope to accomplish, that makes it stand out?

      It shows us a frightening series of events, coming hard and fast.   You feel their effects on an upper middle-class Manhattan family, especially their young child.  This young boy, Miles is too bright, too imaginative not to try to put these devastating events into perspective.  It is a chilling process to watch Miles do this.

   As Wendigo begins, Miles is sitting alone, in the back of a large, well-furnished car on a dark country road.  He is absorbed in some private game; in one hand he holds a plastic model of a wolfman slightly resembling the character from the 1940’s movies.  In the
other hand, a figure resembling a transformer.

   George and Kim, Miles’ father and mother, talk quietly in the front seat.  Upscale Manhattan talk, high-power careers.

   Then in a second, everything changes.  The car slams into a male deer.  The deer propelled over the roof, leaving a trail of blood across the windshield. Then it is lying by the side of the road, motionless but not dead.  The car is trapped in snow and mud.  Three local hunters approach the car.  All carrying high-power
rifles.  Two have that “same shit, different day” look on their faces.  The third has a look of quiet fury—a walking time bomb.

   George is able to keep it together.  “You mind putting that thing down?” he asks calmly.  But you see Miles’ face, literally twitching as he takes this in.  It’s not as if his family ignores him; when one hunter shoots the buck, Kim gets out of the car and screams at him for using the gun in front of Miles.

   The family has a long wait for a tow truck.  The hunters, not asked to stay, remain at the scene. The angry one, Otis, suddenly walks over to the car and tells George he busted one of the buck’s antlers.

   Finally the tow comes.  The driver knows the hunters, and they convince him to let them pull the car free.

    George refuses to pay them, saying, no one asked for your help.  Kim gives them money; Otis thanks her sarcastically.

   Your first impression:  things could have worked out much worse.  Like in Deliverance.

   But keep in mind, Miles is a young child who’s never heard of Deliverance.  He’s just seen an innocent creature killed, his car stuck in the middle of the wilderness, and his parents confronted by men with guns.  Not exactly The Velveteen Rabbit.

   At first, the house where they’re spending the weekend looks safe and comfortable.  Miles never sees the bullet holes in the windows and wall, but George notices. And without a doubt, Miles picks up on his father’s anxiety.

      Miles draws pictures of what he remembers. The buck. All the blood. Unable to sleep, he looks through the illustrations in his book of Native American History.  The (appropriate and realistic) violence in the pictures means more to Miles than ever before.  He falls asleep but dreams of Otis coming in the room and shooting
him.

   He stares at a wood carving in one case.  A strange but gentle Native American man describes the figure to Miles.  The Wendigo,  a truly powerful spirit, capable of taking on many forms.  “It can fly at you like a sudden storm…without warning.”

    “Always hungry, its hunger is never satisfied.  The more it eats the bigger it gets, the bigger it gets the hungrier it gets.”

The figure Miles finds

     Miles is more intrigued than frightened.   He appears to view the legends as another form of super-hero story.   He has frames of reference for those.

    But the buck’s violent death is different for him.  Back in the car, he is recalling the Native American’s words, “there are spirits that are angry” as they drive by Otis’ house and see the buck hanging on a rack.  Miles imagines the buck’s angry spirit and is terrified.  He may well feel responsible; he was riding in the car that hit it.

Otis–not satisfied till he gets vengeance

     You see a dramatic change in Miles when George takes him sledding.  The father does most of the talking as they walk up a long hill. He recites a little bit of Robert Frost’s poetry, exactly right for this snowy day.  Miles asks his dad if he’s heard of the Wendigo.   George answers in a reassuring way: probably it only eats the bad guys, not good kids like you.  He speaks a little about
people’s need for mythology.    Telling his son: don’t disbelieve it, but don’t view it literally.

      These moments represent a near-perfect father and son bonding.  The father points the way for the son growing up and viewing the world.  He doesn’t tell him, look at it my way, but gently introduces him to his perspectives.  Miles is more than willing to listen; not a clone of his father, but able to integrate his viewpoints.

   Only seconds after they start downhill, George falls backward off the sled and lies motionless.  Miles is afraid his father is dead.  The wind picks up suddenly; the snow blows in circles.  Miles abruptly
is frightened and runs.

   Hours later, Kim finds Miles asleep in the snow, in shock.  They search for George; he seems to have walked away.  After a long search they finally find him near the house.  Although he is conscious and talking, they can see he has lost a lot of blood.

   Kim sends Miles inside to bring out a blanket; Miles does it, stopping to pick up the wooden figure. Standing next to his bleeding dad, Miles momentarily sees something—perhaps the real Wendigo, two or three times as tall as George, made up entirely of bare, dead branches.  He recalls the words, “It can fly at you…and devour you…”

   As they drive to the hospital, George is in a delirious state and talks a lot.  You imagine Miles’ struggle, processing all of it, on top of knowing that his father was shot.  George asks him about the
wooden figure, tells him, “See?  I was listening to you…Give me your hand, Miles.”

   In the car and waiting in the hospital corridor, Miles hears a much-condensed tale of life and death from his dad.  Not that Miles is anywhere near ready for his initiation, but it is forced on him,  like it or not.  Every word deeply powerful in its own way.
“Miles, I want you to take care of your Mom…Such a
beautiful day…You’re my family…I’m always gonna be with you…”

   Then his dad is rolled into the OR; Miles is alone and he knows it.

    No one notices Miles entering the room while his father is prepped for surgery.  He doesn’t see much blood but it is clear his dad’s life is hanging in the balance.  Miles imagines in graphic detail his dad sitting up, screaming for help.  Miles faints.

Miles sees the wooden figure as his protection

 

 

SPOILERS AHEAD

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   Sometime later, Kim finds Miles on the floor. Later still, Miles watches his mother in the corridor while a woman from the hospital talks to her, and ominously drops his dad’s boots.  Seeing Kim’s expression, Miles probably knows already.   His dad is dead.

   Only a few minutes later, Otis is wheeled down the same corridor.  His eyes meet Miles’ for a moment, then Otis is gone, too.

   You never find out what goes through Miles’ mind, seeing Otis.   That Otis is about to die too? That the wooden Wendigo protected him and his mom, but not his dad, not Otis?  That he himself willed the Wendigo to kill Otis?  That the angry spirit of the buck, working somehow through the Wendigo, killed Otis?  So many questions, so few answers, especially for a city kid; the Catskills may as well be Siberia for him.

   To many, an ending like this must be unsatisfying, a reason not to like Wendigo.  Too much ambiguity, too much not explained.

   But think about a movie like The Emerald Forest,(1982) and you may get some additional perspective.

   In that film, Tomme has grown up among adults who have taught him long and hard about his world.  They can. sense exactly when he is ready to become a Man.   They not only give him the appropriate ceremony, they send him on a vision quest to ensure he finds his own way.  Miles is much younger, and lives in a society which has lost touch with most of its rites of manhood.  This is the real horror of Wendigo;  imagining yourself in Miles’ shoes.

   With only the little bit of learning he has had, he now must face life without a father.

   I can see plenty of negatives people will find with this movie.  Too ambiguous.  It jumps around, telling too many stories at once.  Amateurish special effects at times.  Shock-editing with no clear
purpose. All valid complaints…to some extent.

   But look at Miles and all he is forced to go through.  His struggle to put any of his strange journey into perspective makes a story that cuts deep.