Shadows on the Wall

Ithaqua

dir Casey Walker
scr Peter Scott Vicaire, Pascal Trottier, Casey Walker
prd Casey Walker, Jason Ross Jallet, Andrew Bronfman, Jonathan Bronfman, Peter Scott Vicaire
with Luke Hemsworth, Kevin Durand, Michael Pitt, Craig Lauzon, Leenah Robinson, Aaron Poole, Joel Thomas Hynes, Pamela Matthews, Mara Pasley, Peter Millard, Nabil Traboulsi, Caroline Raynaud, Jude Evans
release UK Aug.26 frf
26/Canada Hammer 1h50

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Strikingly shot in the snowy Canadian wilderness, this film nicely captures its 19th century period and setting, and it's populated by characters who are intriguing and enjoyably messy. Filmmaker Casey Walker sets up the story robustly, revealing the relationships, clashes and challenges before things take a few rather nasty turns. The tension that comes along is genuinely unnerving, especially as this turns into an original ghostly zombie horror.

In a remote fur trading post in 1821, Cole (Hemsworth) returns from a hunt empty-handed, much to the annoyance of the hungry, sickly people living there. But his native girlfriend Ahnung (Robinson) is happy to see him, and so is her tetchy grandmother Nokomis (Matthews). But the fort's arrogant magistrate McKeller (Pitt) is plotting to evict natives from the area, and he sends Cole out on another expedition, this time overseen by British grandee Walker (Durand). Soon, they find themselves tracking a beast they can never kill, and the undead wendigo are on the prowl.

Action sequences are inventively staged, even if most are annoyingly difficult to see because they're set in the darkness. Equally entertaining is how bawdy these men are, prone to relatively good-natured brawling and some intense power games. So there are flashpoints between them that feel perilous long before any external threat appears. Cole has been having his own feverish dreams for a while now, revisiting his violent past. And now something sinister is making everyone go a bit mad. Only a handful of people are keeping a level head.

The actors find terrific details in their characters, which makes the interaction engagingly spiky. Hemsworth holds the focus as the good guy Cole, whose open mind allows him to see the truth of what's going on around him. Durand has fun with the pompous, blustering Walker, who clashes with Cole at every opportunity. In contrast to Pitt's sneering McKeller, Lauzon is a bundle of scrappy charm as Cole's resilient hunting partner. And Robinson has a terrific steely honesty as Ahnung.

Colonial issues add subtext, and it's especially nice that the living are far scarier than the undead, and also that the menace remains somewhat opaque. Intriguingly, this isn't simply a case of nature taking revenge against interlopers; it's a comment about self-preservation regardless of the cost. Some of these men are monsters long before they turn into carnivorous beasts. And evil actions have repercussions.

themes, language, violence 27.Aug.26

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