Review: ‘The Last Winter’ on DVD

Travis:

There’s been a lot of talk about this being a tremendously original and scary movie, and I can see where the talk is coming from, but I wouldn’t necessarily go that far. Director Larry Fessenden (Habit) has made a stark, psychologically frightening horror film that plays on the fine line between supernatural terror and the elasticity of the human mind and its ability to maintain a solid grip on reality while under extreme circumstances.

The story follows a group of people who work for North Industries, an oil drilling outfit, who are secluded at a future drilling station up in northern Alaska within the Arctic Circle. The group is led by Ed Pollack (Ron Perlman) who is determined to find a way to get his equipment into the area to start the operation. However, with global warming seemingly in fast-forward and the permafrost thawing, an environmental impact analyst stationed with the crew named James Hoffman (James LeGros) is putting the kabosh on Pollack’s plans. tensions rise as the two battle each other on this topic, all the while members of the crew are slowly losing their minds, resulting in their untimely “accidental” deaths. Hoffman is aware of something mysterious and powerful going on that he can’t explain… something more sinister than global warming, but the others refuse to take him seriously, especially Pollack. Is the disturbance in the tundra a supernatural force, seeking revenge against it’s disrespectful human inhabitants, or is it all just merely in the delusional heads of a small group of people who’ve spent too much time isolated in the vast white void of the north?

As I mentioned already, Fessesnden has created an entertaining, somewhat creepy film with ‘Last Winter’ but to call it original is stretching it a bit. To begin with, Fessenden apparently has a personal fixation on the mythological Wendigo story of the Native American people. In 2001, he made a film called ‘Wendigo’ that followed a photographer who encounters this supernatural force… ‘The last Winter’ is also a film that touches on this storyline of the mythical creature. The movie itself is well-made, but stylistically seems to borrow heavily from John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’. By no means is this a disappointing film, offering some highly effective cinematography that plays well with the bleak landscape and Perlman is a joy to watch, as usual. I will say that it’s freaky factor seems to take hold the most upon finishing the film, leaving you in a mental state of creepy uncertainty.

[rating:3.5/5]