Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are is a strange and wonderful creation, like the book that inspired it. I can understand, however, if many are disappointed by it or don’t care for it at all. Jonze and scriptwriter Dave Eggers have taken the 9 page, 9 sentence Maurice Sendak book about a little boy who retreats into his imagination and transformed it into a 90 minute film about the complex emotions and erratic feelings that drive our early childhood. Continue reading
Chances are you might have heard of Larry Fessenden, and if you have, most of his buzz is probably coming off of this 2001 movie. Larry directed a creepy and sometimes off-putting vampire film called Habit early in his indie career and followed that movie up with this one. And after making Wendigo, he apparently became obsessed with the titular mystical beastie since both of his following efforts would feature the dark forest spirit prominently. The Last Winter was an eco-thriller with a ghost story wrapped around it, and his episode of Fear Itself, written by AICN’s Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan, was a grotesque little tale with Doug Jones as a most hideous wendigo.
But for my money, it’s this little feature here that works the best. Wendigo isn’t solely about some monster in the woods, though. It’s really about the ways in which children see the world as they grow up and tells the story of a little boy coming to grips with the difference between the phantoms of his imagination and the harsher dangers of the real world. It’s an odd spooky trip and whole chunks of it play like The Shining done documentary style. Continue reading
