May 3–10, 2001

movies

Every Day A Little Death

You’ve got to know Wendigo: John Speradakos in a scene from Wendigo.

Larry Fessenden’s distinctively domestic horror.

by Sam Adams

You’re on the train between New York and Philadelphia when suddenly it grinds to a halt. At first, you hear nothing. Then, the conductor announces that there will be "a delay." Wait ten minutes, or 15, and the delay’s cause is revealed — sort of. At least, if you can figure out what an "intruder incident" is. For an hour, then two, you sit, and every time the conductor comes back on, the wording grows more precise. The police are mentioned, then later, the word "investigation." Still later, the phrase "clear the tracks," and finally, euphemism exhausted, the word "body." What began as a simple trip has turned into the fact that you’re waiting for pieces of someone else to be moved off the track before the train can go on its way.

That’s what happened to Larry Fessenden the last time he tried to come to Philadelphia — more or less. Heading down in 1998 to present his East Village vampire movie Habit, Fessenden missed the screening when his train was stalled because of a body on the tracks. The details, actually, come from my last movie-related Philly-to-NYC train trip. But there’s something about the way the horrific slowly crept into the everyday as I listened to the conductor run out of ways to be indirect that matches up neatly with Fessenden’s films, both Habit and his new Wendigo, which screens this Friday as part of the PFWC. (The film premiered at Slamdance in January, and Fessenden hopes to secure a distributor in time for a fall theatrical release.)

An unabashed fan of Universal horror pictures — wolfmen, zombies and the like — Fessenden also draws on a wholly different tradition, one that twists genre forms to ends as domestic as they are fanciful. Wendigo, in which a New York couple on vacation upstate are menaced both by a vengeful hunter and the half-man, half-deer spirit of the title, has as much in common with Straw Dogs or Deliverance as it does with The Shining. It’s about the horror of the mundane, the things that frighten us every day as well as the things we hope never to see.

Horror, says Fessenden by phone from Los Angeles, is "a mood I find extremely tantalizing, and consistent with my take on daily life. It’s not that I find everything horrifying, but I find there’s a tremendous poignancy to reality, and a sort of a sadness and a potential for disaster in every moment, which can lead you to an appreciation of the moment, but also an awareness of the tenuousness of things. I’m just saying, you wanna talk about horror, it’s right here in everyday life."

Despite his fondness for the genre, Fessendedn is hardly lobbying to direct Scary Movie 3. He’s not delighted with being pigeonholed as "the horror guy in the independent world" and consistently relegated to midnight movie sections of film festivals. "It’s a little disappointing," he says, especially given the kind of "serious" movies given the prime spots. "Can’t I compete with the big boys who make stories about coming of age? My film is serious, and serious-minded, but it’s just the way it goes."

Still, he admits that the horror tag is as much blessing as curse, in that it provides an easy hook for distributors and audiences. "Habit was embraced," he theorizes, "because it was a genre film that had intelligence. The genre film [label] got it on the shelves. You just make an indie about a drunk — which was sort of the theme of that movie — well, that’s just one of many." Likewise, Wendigo deals with common themes of alienation and complacency, the city folk frightened by the hunters with guns and coarse attitudes, and the hunters resentful of the monied intruders who’ve bought up their land. (One of them yells, "I piss in your drinking water every week!") But through the eyes of the couple’s young son (played by Malcolm in the Middle’s Erik Per Sullivan), their fear takes on a supernatural cast, and the Wendigo figurine he acquired at the local drugstore begins to seem like a harbinger of bad things to come.

Still, Fessenden says, he hopes his movies come across as at least slightly optimistic, or at least inspire people to make the most of their surroundings. "The fates are so quick to drop a brick on your fucking head, you better be enjoying your day, even if it’s a bummer," he advises. "You could be so much worse off in a moment."

Wendigo screens Fri., May 4 at 11 p.m., Ritz Bourse, and Sun., May 6 at 9 p.m., International House. Fessenden will attend the Friday screening. See Fest Shorts for review.