The Last Winter Details

[Highly rated reviewer]

Winter horror land

The Last Winter is a curious mixture of psychological horror and eco-thriller. Writer , director and indeed actor Larry Fessenden has created a movie that is difficult to categorise and that poses a startling question. Is there a point at which mother nature -or what ever moniker you wish to use- will start viewing humanity as a virulent virus and seek to wipe us off the face of the earth?

Set in the artic region of Northen Alaska a team of oil drilling contractors are surveying the area in order to prepare for the eventual expolitation of the oilfields there. The teams leader Ed Pollack( Ron Perlman) is a brash loud get the job done type of guy and this leads to conflcit with Hoffman( James LeGros), an enviromental consultant employed by the oil comapny to decide to weigh the enviroemntal concerns with corporate desire to secure 'energy independance' ( A token gesture) who is worried that the area is showing signs of enviromental depreciation. Their emnity is not helped by Hoffmans romantic involvement with Abby ( Connie Britton) another member of the crew who had previously been involved with Pollack.

Meanwhile the crews youngest member Maxwell ( Zach Gifford) starts to act with increasing eccentricity , muttering darkly about things on the ice until he wanders off alone and more worringly unclothed one night. Then things start to get really weird and it becomes increasingly apparent the team are in under attack from forces they cannot comprehend

The Last Winter is no slam bang gorefest .It has an intermiable insidious atmosphere, slowly escalating the tension and dread through portentous omens- sudden gusts of wind, ravens circling ominously and the indiginous foreboding frigid landscape until the moment the inhabitants of the station realise they are in a fight for survival.The ending is powerfully ambiguous and Fessenden allows his camera to prowl and swoop like a natural predator stalking its prey. There is a precision and ecomomy both to the script and the screenplay -indeed it,s only in the revelation of the nature of the threat that the film loses focus , and here it reminds me forcibly of the creature that inhabits Dan Simmons book 'The Terror' which is tied in with native mythology .

A clever and absorbing film The Last Winter is more an exercise in creepy psychological terror than a committed horror film and its one that admirably refuses to pander to it,s audiences expectations with ti,s final frame an audacious exercise in minimalism. And its enviromental message , based on hard fact( The permafrost surrounding Alaska and Canada is melting even as i write) is actually more powerful than any amount of statistics and hysterical hectoring.

Absolutely Freezing

What a waste of time and money spent on the making of this pointless and to be quite frank atrocious film. I was willing to give it a chance but by forty five minutes it was dropping well below zero so I fast forwarded through the remainder to see if I could find any part of it which looked promising. Alas I found none. Please don't waste your time on this one!