George is an unhappy Manhattan adman who, feeling creatively stiffled by his job and otherwise dissatisfied with his cushy Yuppie life, takes his therapist wife and their son on a winter weekend break to a friend's cabin upstate. On the way, they hit a deer, which sparks an ugly altercation with some of the locals, rattling the entire family. Things just get worse from there.

This movie is absolutely wonderful, but it is not at all a typical horror movie. (It also shows what Larry Fessenden can do with something of a budget and top-notch actors.) Wendigo is more domestic horror than supernatural. The scenes between the passive-aggressive parents, and between the privileged city-folk and the inexplicably angry country locals, are brilliant. And all that tension builds excruciatingly until the end, which is simultaneously horrific and predictable.

The whole movie could be interpreted allegorically. It's seen through the eyes of Miles (an excellent Erik Per Sullivan), who observes his parents unhappiness without understanding it. He sees threats from all sides (both physical and other) and tries to make sense of them, without really being old enough yet to clearly distinguish imagination from reality, or even figure out why all the adults are upset. Is what you see Miles' interpretation of real events as he tries to make sense of them, or are there actually supernatural goings on? When you're 6 or so, what is more terrifying - monsters at your window trying to get in, or your parents fighting?

And Wendigo is terrifying. Not many movies are really, truly scary, and I've always been of the view that, when one is, it is for some reason other than whatever is going on up on the screen. If you're lucky, you can figure out what that is. With Wendigo I couldn't. This movie is entirely fueled by imagination - Miles' and yours - and so it is affecting and satisfying in a way that a story just laid out logically for your passive consumption could never be.

10 out of 10.