The Last Winter creatively and effectively uses horror tactics -- fear, tension, anticipation, and just enough gore -- to shock, but never repulse, its audience.
The Last Winter creatively and effectively uses horror tactics -- fear, tension, anticipation, and just enough gore -- to shock, but never repulse, its audience.
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Average Rating: 2.7/5
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As preparation gets under way for the construction of an environmentally devastating oil well in a remote Alaskan base just outside the Arctic Circle, a series of unexplainable occurrences leads a team of adventurers to believe that something supernatural may be afoot in director Larry Fessenden's chilly snowbound thriller. Pollack (Ron Perlman) is the ultra-macho leader of a team of adventurers that includes his former lover Abby (Connie Britton), pot-smoking mechanic Motor (Kevin Corrigan),
and inexperienced newcomer-cum-fortunate son Maxwell (Zach Gilford). When research scientists Hoffman (James LeGros) and Elliot (Jamie Harrold) arrive to assess the environmental impact of the proposed project, Pollack's unmasked contempt for the pair's stalling of the project immediately creates dissent among the group. As emotions boil to the breaking point and cabin fever begins to take hold, Maxwell's increasingly strange behavior is initially attributed to the blinding white barrenness of the region, which has been known to quickly wear thin the fortitude of even experienced men. There's more to Maxwell's midnight wanderings and incoherent mumblings than meets the eye, though, because as the outside temperature begins to rise during the dead of winter and the team members begin to experience fleeting visions out of the corner of their eyes, it starts to seem as if mother nature may be voicing her opposition to the proposed pillaging of her luminous white landscape. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
Fessenden, who directed, produced, cowrote, edited and even has a part in the film rightly values mood at least as much as he does delivering more abominable snow monsters.
The problem is that the ghostly culprit, some sort of nature spirit, isn't nearly as terrifying as the arguments that Pollack makes, or the fact that the ice in such places really is weakening.
It's the imaginative background, and Fessenden's talent at insinuating it into the action, that counts -- and unnerves -- in this most chilling of global-warming movies.
An eco-supernatural dreamscape companion piece to Al Gore's cautionary doc, An Incovenient Truth, and a thinking man's figurative and literal sub-Arctic chiller with a turbulent character-driven indie soul.
An eco-supernatural dreamscape companion piece to Al Gore's cautionary doc, An Incovenient Truth, and a thinking man's figurative and literal sub-Arctic chiller with a turbulent character-driven indie soul.
As such terror is harder and harder to articulate, the film is most effective when it abandons dialogue and leaves the camera to do its very spooky work.
Supernatural horror with an in-your-face environmental message at its heart. It's all about a crew of oil workers camped in the snowy Alaskan landscape who start to experience odd occurances linked to an oil well. Really quite disappointed with this overall, it didn't turn out to be as creepy or scary as it could have
been and it's too damn slow. It does develop a good atmosphere and has one good scare, but the film doesn't really come to life until the 50 minute mark. It had the potential to be a lot better but it was still ok.
May 29, 2011
Lee ?
Super Reviewer
Great performances, cold eerie atmosphere, and chilling story. This movie is pretty creepy, and although slowly paced, it's still spooky.
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