WENDIGO

A typical American family (father, mother, and son) ventures into the snowy wilderness of upstate New York to spend a weekend in a secluded house in the forest. But from the start, something is off. Before reaching the house, they accidentally hit a deer, and a group of hunters who coveted the animal's antlers begin to threaten and pursue them. Then, once they arrive at their destination, strange presences seem to animate the place: the father (excellent Jake Weber) is anxious and nervous, the son starts seeing ghosts and dangers, tension builds in the air, at the local store a mysterious man gives the boy a statuette representing the Wendigo, an evil spirit in ancient Indian legends, and the Wendigo itself at the end of the film comes to life, first as a spirit that commands the forest, then as a gigantic deer, bringing death and destruction. A beautiful, original, high-quality thriller-horror. The initial sequence with the enraged hunters, where it seems they might jump on the unfortunate family at any moment and punish them in some atrocious way, is incredibly suspenseful, cutting off all commentary and interrupting the breath, and the entire film continues in mystery, extreme unease, appearances and ghosts, the tragedy of a family that dissolves, the forest that becomes alive (absorbing Sam Raimi's lesson in "The Evil Dead"), the Wendigo as a fairy-tale monster that here takes on very realistic contours, the horror of what is not seen but felt in the air, the eyes of a child terrified by his ancestral fears. A great film, which unsettles and hypnotizes as rarely seen in recent years. If it never comes out in Italy, it will be a crime.