The Last Winter

Horrorphile

follow this blog

975 followers

4455 daily readers

rank of 1

E-mail Subscription

Receive an e-mail notification of new posts on this site:

The Last Winter

October 8th 2009 23:31

One from the eco-horror bin, The Last Winter (2006), is an Icelandic-American co-production, co-written and directed by actor-cum-producer-cum-direct or Larry Fessenden (who is currently attached to the Hollywood remake of The Orphanage), who also edited the movie (and played a bit part). The rest of the crew were all Icelandic, since some of the movie was shot in Iceland doubling as the Northern Artic region of Alaska.

The subject matter is dead serious: an American oil company is building an ice road to an established drilling base. A skeleton crew at a small sub-station is providing the Government with procedure approvals and environmental reports. The two senior members of the science team; leader Ed Pollack (Ron Perlman), who has just returned to the mission, and James Hoffman (James LeGros) are at loggerheads. Pollack is disgruntled and stubborn, while Hoffman is deeply concerned and open-minded. Adding tension is that young scientist Max (Zach Gilford) has gone off the rails, having hallucinations and severe anxiety attacks. Adding insult to injury is that in Pollack’s absence his bedfellow Abby (Connie Britton) has become lovers with Hoffman.

Ron Perlman as Pollack

Max feels the presence of something very powerful and upset that has been unleashed from Mother Earth. He tries to warn the others, and in a vain – and insane – attempt wanders onto the tundra stark naked with a video camera to capture the entity that he is sure is threatening the team, and more importantly, humankind. His body is found frozen stiff, his eyes plucked by hungry Arctic crows. Something is very wrong, but the scientific team is perplexed. Hoffman comes to the conclusion that sour and malevolent energy has been released from deep below the Earth’s frozen crust, manifesting on the surface into a deadly gaseous formation. Perhaps Hoffman is as psychologically unstable as Max was? The whole team seems to be cracking up.

James LeGros as Hoffman

A gripping and intelligent screenplay and very competent, delicately atmospheric direction with good production values and performances make The Last Winter a solid, thoughtful, albeit edgily ponderous thriller (with horror overtones) dealing with global warming and the impact and implications of industrial progression. The big question being; just how deep will our planet let the human species plough in the name of greed before she does the proverbial catastrophic wriggle and wipes us out?

Something sneaks up on Max (Zach Gilford)

In one light The Last Winter could be viewed as a eco-political stamp a la An Inconvenient Truth, yet in another is could be viewed as pure science fiction-apocalypse. Certainly the movie’s end can be viewed through the latter’s goggles. It’s not an especially frightening or violent movie, but it does get under the skin like some kind of inner cosmic frost. I found the coda to be rather satisfying with its elusive, yet intrinsically menacing mise-en-scene; the hint of a much greater nightmare on the horizon about to rain down.

The frozen menace claims another of the team

But what I really want to know is; were those ghostly apparitions floating across the nocturnal tundra phantom caribou, moose spectres, or some other kind of regional eco-daemon? The movie’s more far-fetched concept suggests the dangerously melting permafrost is exposing the decomposed remains of beings tens of thousands of years old, perhaps linked to Native American spiritual mythology. Curiously Fessendon’s previous spiritual horror movie was titled Wendigo (2001).