< Home / Interview / Critic / Bio / My articles in Japanese >

The Last Winter

Written by Nobuhiro Hosoki

 

A pair of environmental researchers steps into the Alaskan wilderness with oil workers to scout the possibilities for large crude-oil drilling. It is a place where things have already started to change racially with the melting of permafrost and the onset of unpredictable weather. They might possibly be facing their "Last Winter."

Director Larry Fessenden has effectively explored this unsettling  atmosphere by leaning slightly on John Carpenter's film "The Things" and creating characters like Ed Pollack (Ron Perlman), a stubborn bear of an oil-company operative who plans to set the machinery in the station as soon as they get sign off on the contract. But a gloomy researcher named Hoffman (James LeGros) raising issues by pointing out the weather is irregular and the temperature is rising slowly.

Things get even more heated, when Abby (Connie Britton) gets caught in a love triangle with those two. Their quarreling becomes a petty incident when the fresh-faced Maxell (Zach Gilford) goes missing while out mapping the territory, then returns all spooked and claiming to have encountered things out in the white snow.  That same night, he goes out carrying a small video camera and nothing else; the next day he is found frozen to death.  It is then that an unforeseen force starts to send a shiver through the crews. The psychosis begins to play with their minds as they find themselves in places difficult to escape or be rescued from.

Director Fessenden tackles all this with a low budget using a menacing Alaskan backdrop to stretch out the imagination by capturing the bleak chill and isolated characters. This is a film in the horror genre with a significant global-warming message that balances out the theme with imagination. Throughout, the film relies on impressive camerawork, and there's always a sense of doom in the air that makes you feel real horror is slowly sneaking up on you!

Directed and edited by Larry Fessenden
Written by Mr. Fessenden and Robert Leave
Director of photography: G. Magni Agustsson
Music score by Jeff Grace, ambient score by Anton Sank
Production designer: Halfdan Larus Pedersen
Produced by Mr. Fessenden and Jeffrey Levy-Hinte
Released by IFC First Take.
Running time: 100 minutes.
This film is not rated.

Cast: Ron Perlman (Ed Pollack)
James Le Gros (James Hoffman)
Connie Britton (Abby Sellers)
Zach Gilford (Maxwell McKinder)
Kevin Corrigan (Motor)
Jamie Harrold (Elliot Taylor)
Pato Hoffmann (Lee Means),
and Joanne Shenandoah (Dawn Russell).