Larry Fessenden is someone to watch. With first Wendigo and now this, he should be on everyone's cinematic radar- having demonstrated a unique voice, a refusal to do things the way others do them and delivering two absolute masterpieces in a row.<br /><br />Fessenden has a particular eye, a genuinely unnerving sense of pace and an approach to film-making that seems out of it's time. I can't tell if it's the depth of his characters, the measured beats of the screenplay, the great hollows of silence on the soundtrack or the straightforward refusal to write gags into his movies that does it, but it's like he's making movies for smart adults in a genre where such things are rare. And thank god for that, because this world could use some more Larry Fessendens to balance it out.<br /><br />Briefly, Ron Perlman is a hard-bitten Oil Prospector working in the Arctic Tundra. He has to get the big machines in, so that drilling can begin- but the weather's shot to hell and Company-employed Environmentalist Hoffman won't sign the right papers. And something's out there in the wilderness. Something that drives men mad and may have doomed them all.<br /><br />No spoilers here- see it 'cold' (if you'll pardon the pun). If you need it to be categorised, then imagine Kubrick's The Shining, crossed with Carpenter's The Thing, mixed up with Fessenden's own Wendigo sauce. It's a brutal, lyrical screenplay, using some fine actors and glorious cinematography- and it'll creep under your skin. Oh, just see it! Maybe that way, he'll make some more...<br /><br />Steev