The Windigo

I didn't see any of the trailers prior to seeing this movie but I initially started watching it because I was familiar with the legend of the Windigo. The movie started out as one son's wish to protect his family but quickly turned into a power trip gone wrong after calling a supernatural entity. I was hoping for more of a supernatural horror movie, similar to The Conjuring or The Watchers, but was unfortunately disappointed. While I realize that this may be a low budget movie but I wasn't happy with the acting, which appear to be stilted in places, and the Windigo's outfit appeared to be made out of latex and didn't appear realistic.

I was pretty interested and excited about watching this. Let the lights down and it instantly starts off with a pretty cheesy opening scene that showed way too much of the creature. Throughout the film it felt as if Marco Fuller was more of a distraction to what the movie could have been.

It felt like I was watching an episode of the 90s goosebumps that just kept going. The pacing was not good, you feel as if you're waiting for it to get better, then it just never does. It had some decent practical effects, but then probably the worst cgi of the year in one scene.

The delivery is stale and uninspired.

To me, I think several of the reviews here are quite harsh. I mean ratings of 1 or 2... C'mon, compared to the usual poorly made drivel we wade through in low budget Horror these days. Totally unjustified. Don't go by those.

It's no masterpiece by any means, but like I said in my title above, I really did like the acting and felt along with the writing the characters and dialog came across as believable and realistic.

It's just that the story itself was pretty basic and you could tell just about what was going to happen. To me though, I really liked the characters and the way they interacted, which for me personally is almost ALWAYS the thing that lets these kind of movies down in a big way. So, that was really refreshing to see it well written and acted.

I really liked the character of the Grandmother. So many times a character like that, an old Native American woman, can so easily come across as overdone or very cliched, speaking in superficial cryptic phrases. But, quite honestly I totally liked the older woman's character and they way she came across, she was really good.

So yeah, no big deal here with this film, except the definite above average acting/writing. The story is passable, but with the well done cinematography and direction, not to mention the good looking local, not a bad little movie to pass the time.

I gave it a solid '6'... Please don't pay any attention to these Numbnuts giving the moderately entertaining movie a completely unjustified 1 or 2, certainly not compared to the wealth of truly poor done and quickly cranked out crap that is considered Horror these days.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ MY PARTICULAR WAY OF RATING:

5 - Flawed, but with some entertainment value.

6. A decently passable story maybe worth a watch.

7. A solid film, well made, effective, and entertaining.

And, obviously, you can probably figure out what above and below these would mean... : )

I wanted a scary movie and the promising reviews did me in. This is not only not scary at all, it's not a good movie, don't waste your time. No atmosphere was created aside from something that Hallmark might produce. The accompanying music was awful in trying to establish the mood. Another reviewer mentioned the actor Marco Fuller being more of a distraction than anything of value, and I couldn't agree more, and I couldn't exactly say why. It looked like the actors were acting on top of all the other fails - maybe the grandma was the most convincing. It got annoying to watch and I couldn't waste any more time on it.

First of all, this is not a Wendigo. Do not be fooled with some of these reviews saying that it's a good watch if you want to learn more about the Wendigo. This is much closer to the Wechuge (and even then, still not that close at all). They barely even got the cannibalistic aspect of it right. How do you mess that up? The Wendigo actually looks like a pale human with elongated limbs, and, of course, eats people (to oversimplify it).

At least they didn't also confuse it with the Skinwalker. The costume for the creature was obviously fake, but their budget was likely low and that was the best they could do. Don't hate on them for that. The acting was doable, but sometimes cringey. They included Native American actors as the main characters, so there's that at least. But that doesn't save them from how incorrect and how bad this movie was.