North to Alaska, where CGI elk freak the shit out of oilmen, who in turn freak the shit out of us, in Larry Fessenden's The Last Winter

The Wendigo is a wintry, ashen, emaciated, blood thirsty and all-around nasty creature of Algonquin origin, a malevolent spirit said to possess human beings, especially those who practice cannibalism. Like so many mythical beasts derived from oral traditions, it cuts a figure that can be deeply terrifying when left to the imagination, and is especially potent when applied figuratively to dark stories about individuals who dare to step over the frontiers of taboo. It’s kind of a shame then that Larry Fessenden, the American character actor who’s conjured Wendigo in his previous directorial efforts, ultimately gives in to actually showing us a pretty cheesy-looking Wendigo in the final moments of his latest, slickest movie The Last Winter (2006), because this otherwise creepy, resonant and smart—if very didactic—chamber horror yarn, set in a small oil drilling base in Alaska, deserves to fully capitalize on its subtlety. It also, in any event, deserves to be seen by a larger audience, which with any luck it might find now that it’s on DVD from IFC.

Following a congressional hearing that finally opens up Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, a certain corporation called North smacks their lips and is ready to get drilling—if only they could get their equipment in. Sadly, Hoffman (the always terrific James LeGros), the “greenie” geologist hired by North to flesh out their PR campaign, has turned out to be a wicked messenger, the message being that this global warming stuff is really happening and the melting permafrost makes it basically impossible to traverse the tundra. Enter project manager Ed Pollack (Ron Perlman, that line-backer version of Tom Waits, here playing a highly enjoyable blowhard). An intimidating spokesman for the bottom line, Pollack arrives on the scene to ensure that North’s trucks make it through, even in the face of unnerving mishaps like employees going bonkers and a series of gruesome deaths.

Fessenden and his writing partner Robert Leaver had The Last Winter written back in 2001. As it generally goes with independent movies, the script took several years to be brought to life and by the time it saw the light of a movie theatre—it played briefly in New York last autumn—it’s political subtext had been beat to the punch by Al Gore and the little environmentalist documentary that could, An Inconvenient Truth (06). By the time most of us see it, its commentary on the sanguine undercurrent of oil drilling will have even been overshadowed by PT Anderson’s towering There Will Be Blood (07). But The Last Winter is here to—if you’ll excuse the paraphrasing—deliver the weather, not the news. Anyone who isn’t a total idiot doesn’t need a conceptual horror movie to know about global warming and the glossed-over evils of the oil industry, but The Last Winter channels these issues into a story that’s fundamentally designed to provide chills of a more primordial nature. As one character informs us, what is oil, after all, if not dead animals and dead plants? This perspective renders the cultivation of oil into a sort of ghoulish desecration, and helps make The Last Winter into a good old-fashioned tale of things that go bump in the night.

Speaking of bumping in the night, the film has some good subplots, such as the affair unfolding between Hoffman and Abby (played with just a hint of duplicity by the lovely Connie Britton), their noisy sexual activity keeping the emotionally bruised Pollack up in the wee hours, grinding the corporate axe with Hoffman’s name on it. I really liked that Fessenden and Leaver have Pollack engaging in territorial man-talk with Hoffman even when faced with the possibility of frozen death. It’s these very human details that keep The Last Winter buoyant, even when the bleakness of both big and little picture loom large over the proceedings.

IFC’s disc features a very worthwhile audio commentary from Fessenden, who’s informative, articulate and even quite funny in a rather dry sort of way. Of the film’s use of archival footage of oil drilling he explains, “It was very important to me to show oil drilling in a movie about oil drilling with no oil drilling.” It’s fun to hear him talk about his excitement over the benefits of working with a larger budget—the many helicopter shots, the dolly set-ups just for little stuff, the birds from Harry Potter, “the real stars of the movie,” Fessenden confesses— as well as with very good actors, and with Iceland, where he actually shot most of The Last Winter. (And it’s funnier still to learn that the groans of desire we hear from LeGros during his off-screen humpy-pumpy were actually taken from a scene in which he’s helping Perlman escape from drowning.) All in all, one can’t help but appreciate what Fessenden is trying to make: a thoughtful, medium-budget movie with indie credibility in a genre overrun with crappy excess. The Last Winter isn’t entirely a triumph in this regard, but it’s close enough to light the hope that Fessenden can keep going in this racket.