Windigo - Die Nacht des Grauens

I saw this film at a rather young age when I rented it from a video store, and it really, really scared me. "Ghostkeeper" is about three friends (two women and one man) who are snowmobiling during the holidays up in the mountains. Despite a storekeepers warning, they head up the slopes, only to have one of the women crash her snowmobile. With only one snowmobile left for transportation, and a snowstorm coming in, the three decide to stay in an old abandoned hotel lodge looming in front of them. They meet an old lady (played by Georgie Collins, who actually gives a really scary performance) who is living there with her unseen son, but she is hiding a ghostly secret.

Definitely one of the better '80s horror films, this unknown little chiller should be a familiar entry in the genre, but sadly is seen by hardly anybody. It didn't receive a big release and got little attention, which is really too bad because of how good the film is. The storyline actually original, and the setting is, in one word - CREEPY! The isolated lodge and the snowy mountain backdrop are a nice accent to the film and really add to it's scariness, and are a little reminiscent of "The Shining". The acting is mediocre, but so what? It's an '80s horror flick, you can't expect Oscar-worthy performances. The strange ending will leave you creeped out but also satisfied. I love this film because of it's simple set-up and foreboding spookiness. Surely an underrated little horror gem. If you can get a hold of it (since it's now pretty hard to find, only being available on a long out-of-print video tape), definitely do. It's one of the better (and overlooked) early '80s horrors. 10/10.

A bickering young couple and their sexy female friend are snowmobiling in the (Canadian?) wilderness when they run across an old hotel where they are forced to seek shelter from a sudden winter storm. At first the hotel seems to deserted, but then they run into a strange old woman who claims to be the caretaker and alludes to a having couple of "kids" "around somewhere". As night falls one of the girls disappears and the remaining pair realizes all is not as it seems in the hotel. This movie can be easily written-off as a cheap, Canadian rip-off of "The Shining", but that's not entirely fair--it also rips-off other movies like "The Sentinel" pretty severely. And it tries, very ham-handedly, to mine the native Canadian legend of the wendigo (spelled "windigo here for some reason).

This movie has very little going for it. The plot is pretty dumb and derivative. The dialogue is generally clunky (except maybe for a funny scene where the sexy blonde friend tells a story about seducing a substitute teacher when she was in high school). The characters range from bland to genuinely dislikeable (especially the guy). The girls both look good in their snowsuits but have no nude scenes, which doesn't have to be a deal-breaker except that the movie has one of those famous non-nude bathtub scenes just to kind of rub in the actual dearth of real skin. The one good thing I can say about this movie is that it does have a pretty effective atmosphere. The gloomy, snowbound hotel is eerie and portentous, even if there is no real payoff to justify all the eerie portentiousness.

This movie was made in the early 80's when the American horror film industry was starting to go south (figuratively), and the Canadian film industry, encourage by friendly tax laws, started to go south (literally). This movie is a little more ambitious than most of the Canadian tax shelter projects in that it wasn't content to be just another "Halloween" slasher movie knock-off. It kind of reminded me of "Death Ship", so if you liked that. . . It's hard to find to find these days though and probably not worth looking too hard for.

A slow-burn (or should I say slow-freeze) chiller set deep in the snowy mountains of Canada, GHOSTKEEPER is effective at creating an atmosphere and not very effective at doing anything with it.

Three friends snowmobiling around the middle of nowhere for New Year's Eve soon find themselves stranded at a strange hotel, abandoned except for a mysterious old woman who seems to be keeping something from them. It sounds like a solid set-up for a generic '80s slasher, and I've seen the film often categorized as such, but I'd hesitate to call it one.

It's certainly not a "teens in the woods get picked off one by one by a madman" movie. It's instead a "slow descent into madness" type of movie; imagine if THE SHINING had a no-name Canadian cast and wasn't really very good.

That being said, icicles of atmosphere hang all over this thing. I always felt Paul Zaza to be an underrated player in the composer game, and his score here is wonderful. Understated and mysterious, GHOSTKEEPER would be practically nothing without it. It's also decently well-shot and the locations are beautiful.

A solid build-up unfortunately melts away in the second half. Characters who acted very similarly the entire film suddenly act completely different. Other characters show up randomly just to be immediately slaughtered. Everything feels very scattershot and aimless.

I feel like the film is very close to becoming a spot-on representation of a certain kind of Wendigo myth: a Wendigo that does not hunt as a beast, but instead rattles the aching, snow-addled minds around it into a cabin fever psychosis. Unfortunately, GHOSTKEEPER just doesn't quite get it right. Worth a look for fans of atmospheric horror, but by no means a must-see.

The wintery Canadian mountains which provide the desolate setting are only slightly snowier than the plot, which finds withdrawn, teetering-on-the-edge-of-crazy Jenny, her rotten boyfriend and their slutty blonde chic friend stranded at a shuttered snowbound inn. Seemingly abandoned, it isn't long before they realize they aren't the only ones there. "Ghostkeeper" is a textbook example of how much a movie can be made or broken by its soundtrack. Many long, inactive treks through this abandoned ski lodge would be unbearable if not for the sinister score - which will ring familiar to most horror-nerds as nearly identical to the one from fellow 1981 Canadian horror film, Prom Night - both done by the same guy. If you need a movie with a cohesive plot, you certainly should look elsewhere. But if you can enjoy a spooky, hazy film which is heavy on dreadful atmosphere and creepy music while remaining non-existent on gore and nudity - you've met your match. It certainly is an odd duck, especially for the time period in which it was made. It's reputation as a hidden gem is well-deserved and it will come as a nice surprise to jaded horror fans who think they've seen it all.

***Only the 3rd & 4th paragraph contain spoilers***

I had read up a little bit on "Ghostkeeper" before I decided to get me a copy and watch it. Since up until now I hadn't really seen a movie about the Wendigo legend that actually worked like it should, I was pretty interested in seeing another take on it. Furthermore, the comment-section for this film on here, is a bit peculiar, to say the least. Not too many people seem to have seen it, and in addition to that, there seems to be hardly any gray area. Some people praise it too high heaven, while others bash it to hell. I'd like to enter that gray area.

While I'm not ignorant to the movie's flaws – because it does have its fair share of those – I would prefer to focus on its merits rather than to enlarge its shortcomings. I won't go too deep into the story and its characters, as enough of it can be read in schwarhol628's comment. Onto the things this movie has going for it. First off, the desolate, snowy Canadian mountain region provides a wonderful backdrop and adds to the bleak and hopeless tone of the film. Secondly, the musical score by Paul Zaza works wonders. Not only is it effectively eerie, it also helps to support a lot of scenes without dialogues (and there are quite a few of those). On more than one occasion you'll find yourself watching someone just walking through the dark corridors of the hotel with not much else happening. Take away the musical score, and indeed, you'll have a sequence with a whole lot of nothing going on. But the score brings a deep sense of dread and creepiness that fills up the hotel as if it was a dark, malevolent entity itself. This brings us, thirdly, by the hotel – or inn - which really feels like a forsaken place and it brings a similar presence to the film as the Overlook Hotel did for "The Shining". On a smaller scale, of course, yet also a darker one. Because this hotel, at times, really seems engulfed by darkness.

Then we have what this film's story is actually about: The myth of the Wendigo. Now when it comes to that, I felt it had a distinctive ambiguity to it. Not noticeable on the surface at first, but it becomes more and more palpable as the events progress. I've seen the Wendigo depicted as a creature already in films, but here things are a little different, drawing more influences from the spiritual aspects of the myth. An over-powering evil dichotomously divided into the earthly and the supernatural. The hotel is inhabited by a mysterious old woman – undeniably Georgie Collins gives us the best and most enjoyable performance of the whole cast – who comes across as the caretaker of the hotel, but actually is the titular Ghostkeeper. Now the title of this film, confirms how this film handles the Wendigo myth. Partly, the Wendigo is portrayed as a "beast", more specifically a ghoul-like being with cannibalistic tendencies, living a locked-up life in the basement (nourished with human flesh provided by the old woman and her "other boy"). On the other part, the Wendigo seems more like a presence or a force, filling this isolated location with evil, driving everybody who draws near the place slowly to insanity.

Now this last aspect, is also played out ambiguously. The old woman (as the Ghostkeeper under the influence of its evil) refers to Jenny as the strongest person of our trio, strong from the inside. While in reality, Jenny is the most feeble-minded of the bunch, which makes her the perfect victim for the Wendigo to get a hold of, to turn her into the new keeper. It's only gradually that the plot plays it out like this, as first everyone else either dies or slowly goes insane. Now as to the execution of this malevolent plot device, "Ghostkeeper" misses depth. And this is – aside from the obvious pacing problems – a major flaw. Instead of focusing more on the psychological downfall of the characters – admittedly, the cast of three would probably not have been able to handle this, as we're not dealing with stellar performers here – the script kills off Chrissy (the blond girl) soon enough, only to re-introduce the friendly old store-clerk from the opening scene, serving no other purpose than to also end up as food for the ghoul in the cellar. The only one left with hunger, is the viewer himself, as the script offers us little else to chew on.

Looking at "Ghostkeeper" from a glass-half-full point of view, you might be able to put all the film's flaws aside and discover a chilling tale of supernatural mystery driven by an eerie atmosphere. If not, it might remain merely a strangely compelling void of nothingness. And worst case scenario: Perhaps it could put you to sleep. Such a shame.