Saturday, Sep 6, 2008
The director of the acclaimed new movie "Wendigo" talks about horror, terror, metaphysics, mythology, constructing a moral order and how Sept. 11 undermined his agenda.
Feb 26, 2002 | Filmmaker Larry Fessenden's horror movies aren't the blood-and-guts fare typically associated with that genre. "On the most practical level I'm trying to separate my films from conventional horror films," Fessenden says. "My agenda is to take people into a disorienting place where they're both thinking about horror and how it plays into our lives as well as experiencing the movies."
Over the last few weeks, Fessenden's newest film, "Wendigo," has opened in New York and Chicago. It will open in other cities across the country before the end of March. "Wendigo" is the third in Fessenden's trilogy of revisionist horror films that started with 1991's "No Telling" and continued in 1997 with the vampire cult favorite "Habit." In "Wendigo," Fessenden continues his focus on alienation and the loneliness of the human experience. In presenting a Manhattan couple and their son displaced from their urban setting for a weekend away in snowy upstate New York, he immediately sets up a story of conflicts rooted in both real and imagined horrors. On the drive up, when the family's car hits a deer, the accident leads to an encounter with some local hunters. That in turn sets in motion a series of events that turn the idyllic weekend away into an unsettling and menacing trip.
Fessenden approaches this horror scenario from a philosophical angle, deconstructing the genre by delving into our mythologies. "I think horror is a remaining place for this -- horror archetypes are mythological in stature in our culture ... I feel there is a lost quality to modern man, if you will. I'm more interested in exploring all of that than, for example, what the current trend of horror is, just a spectacle of terror and gore." Recently, Fessenden talked with Salon about what he sees as the metaphysical aspects of fear and terror, and his interest in doing something quite different with horror films -- cinema, he says, that "gets at the stuff of dreams and mortality."
Getting people to separate from the traditional forms of horror is a pretty tall order. People's ideas and images of it seem so firmly stuck on Freddy Kruger and "Nightmare on Elm Street." How do you get them away from that?
Well, that's sort of my point, that there is also another type of horror, one that is rooted in existentialism, where you're actually called upon to confront death and somewhat the meaninglessness of life. That's what I find most interesting, the loneliness of experience in a human-centric world where there's no God and where nature is disparaged.
Most movies seem to distract us from the heavy stuff you're talking about.
Exactly. Indeed, it's a tall order. But, I mean, look at the story of Frankenstein. It's a cautionary tale about science and playing God. It's also a good yarn, and there's emotion in it. But the creature is both pathetic and a victim of the doctor's ambition. So even the great horror films have other ambitions than just to shock. I think it's really the recent ones, when Hollywood got on board in the '80s, because of the success of "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Halloween," I think that's when things started getting a bit more trite.
The emotional element is key, then. It's probably the most terrifying.
Yes. But you're experiencing other emotions beyond terror. You could write a book on the difference between horror and terror. Terror tends to be a more immediate fear of perhaps physical harm. Horror is more about existential dread, I would say. Even though you don't hear about terror movies. But you could start to divide films into those categories and perhaps others as well.
Do you completely shun the accepted traits of horror films in your movies? You probably need some of those elements.
Absolutely, and that's the pleasure of a horror film. Because I think people are endlessly curious about real fear. That is another role of a horror film, to take you to a place that you don't want to get to in real life. But one is preoccupied by the sensation of fear and the choices that either help you escape or make you succumb to it. And you get to go on that ride and experience it while in the safety of the theater.
I try to address the disparity between things that really pose a daily threat and then the more imagined fear. And I try to play off of those two things. My second film, "Habit," is really about a guy who's addicted to booze, and he's deluded, and he's deluding himself into believing his girlfriend is a vampire. But what we're really witnessing is someone falling apart. And that's a perfect example of what interests me. I'm playing with a genre. And everyone knows where they stand in the archetype of the vampire story. I'm trying to prod them into recognizing that these are very real horrors as well.
The latest film, "Wendigo," is really about conflict between people who can't communicate. There's a kid who sort of invents this monster to make things right, to interpret a totally arbitrary clash.
You do have a monster. That's pretty standard in horror films. Where'd your monster come from?
I was haunted by this Native American legend of the Wendigo. I heard it when I was a very young kid in third grade; a teacher told it in class. I was very struck by it. But the way the film ended up coming out on the page, there isn't a real monster, or it doesn't need to be real. It's more this kid who encounters the idea of this monster, and he conjures it up. So there's a parallel universe of the supernatural living with the everyday. I'm sort of observing that that's the nature of life. We have our fictions, our concepts, and we experience life through that filter of our expectation.
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