THE LAST WINTER

Alaska. A team of researchers, employees of the multinational North Industries, is implementing a drilling plan for oil extraction. Near the camp lies a white box, left a few years earlier by the drillers right at the point chosen for oil extraction and then inexplicably abandoned. The box attracts the attention of McKinder, who first goes mad and then is found dead frozen in the snow. Meanwhile, the researchers realize that the temperature below them increases day by day. The eco-vengeance genre can be divided into two sub-genres: the more substantial one that shows one or more animals attacking humans, and the narrower one in which nature strikes back against humans in a more abstract way, through cataclysms or unsettling events not always explainable. In the first category, we can include the countless beast movies that increasingly flood the home video market, while in the second, we find unique films like “Frogs” (even though here the “terrible animals” factor is still present), “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers” and this “The Last Winter”. Larry Fessenden’s film, however, does not convince either from a purely conceptual point of view or, above all, from a narrative standpoint. If it can be stated without any doubt that Fessenden (“No Telling – The Syndrome of Frankenstein”; “Wendigo”) knows how to do his job as a director and, technically, improves with the years (and the films), regarding the content aspect “The Last Winter” leaves much to be desired. The starting idea and basic assumption of this film is: man desecrates nature and “squeezes” the Earth, so nature prepares to take its revenge. Simple, in fact, oversimplified, axiom of cause/effect applied to eco-vengeance that, to have a real “why” in a crowded panorama of similar films – especially in the disaster movie landscape – should have had something meaningful to say. If Fessenden wanted to communicate something in particular, we don’t know, since the director didn’t succeed: “The Last Winter”, in fact, gives the viewer the impression of having witnessed nothing. The film proceeds and concludes leading to nothing, and the worst part is that the screenplay is perfectly structured in three acts and each of them presents its own narrative turns. So, there must really be something wrong. The reason must then be found in a myriad of small/large details left to themselves, starting with the complete absence of narrative rhythm. Fessenden has accustomed us to a type of slow, yes, let’s say boring cinema, but strong for the courage to say and show often unpleasant things and to reinterpret with originality collective imaginary myths of which it seemed that everything had been said (think of Frankenstein in “No Telling” and the Vampire in “Habit”). With “The Last Winter” Fessenden seems closer to the para-television style of “Wendigo”, but unlike the latter, it appears more tamed, more lascivious and, above all, less involved. The lack of involvement is then the flaw that also afflicts the viewer, who will find themselves passively observing for ninety minutes a situation that has nothing interesting, plot twists that lead to yawning and deeply ugly characters. The beautiful desolate settings of Alaska, excellently enhanced by a series of very suggestive aerial shots, the restriction of the action to a few environments and the same type of characters, all – surely intentionally – reminiscent of “The Thing” by John Carpenter, but unlike the masterpiece of the director of “Halloween”, in “The Last Winter” the characters are poorly characterized, acted in a non-convincing way and all too similar to each other (both physically and psychologically), incapable of touching the viewer’s heart… in the series: “These characters are not ‘obnoxious jerks’, but I don’t care about their fate at all”. The rhythm is then the great absence of this film; the film is not devoid of relevant events, but everything that happens is so little emphasized, so little interesting as to leave completely indifferent. Even what could have appeared as the only scene of potential fright (the discovery of a corpse and a video recording) is poorly managed, lacking the right tension of preparation that the case required. To further undermine “The Last Winter” there is an unsuitable final climax, which poorly connects with the rest of the situation, a gratuitous and almost ridiculous confrontation of “ours” with monstrous creatures of little appealing design and poorly realized in computer graphics. Only the epilogue is somewhat effective, even if overly seen in many other films, but certainly not capable of saving the day on its own. Frankly, a product like this one, I don’t know who to recommend it to.