This movie perplexed me a lot more than I thought it was going to, because I didn’t think it was going to perplex me at all. The scenes seemed like they were almost surprised by one (1) another, as if they didn’t belong together, like this whole thing was cobbled together on the cutting room floor (and in the dark). The random cutaways to claymation creatures (none of which were the titular Winterbeast) genuinely confounded me. I think this is a movie you need to be on drugs to enjoy and I wasn’t on drugs (or at least not enough of them).
⭐
Trigger Warning Homophobia, Racism
From the movie poster, this seemed like it was going to be a copy/paste of Pumpkinhead which was made four (4) years prior, but this lacked all of the cohesion and any of the charm (AKA Brian Bremer). We haven’t even hit the three (3) minute mark and there has been a clusterfuck of nonsense so tremendous that I seriously considered stopping the film right there and throwing it in the Sunk Cost Fallacy bin (but many people say they love this film, many people who I now want to have a very serious conversation with). I genuinely had no idea what the fuck was going on and the film had only just begun! We are now being greeted by two (2) men, who I’m sure are real stand up gentlemen, as they gawk at a naked woman in a magazine. The magazine, by the way, has many pages stuck together with a mystery substance… Put it DOWN. We learn that a forest ranger has gone missing but the head ranger, Whitman, who had a disturbing dream about his missing coworker, doesn’t seem too concerned. We meet the owner of the Wild Goose Lodge, Mr. Sheldon, who has a very eccentric fashion sense. At random points throughout the movie and with seemingly no relevance to the actual film there are cutaways to claymation creatures (who kill at least one (1) person). A group of rangers and a local store owner (for some reason) are out searching for the missing ranger when they stumble across a shrine with a “dead body” on it. The props in this movie are extremely fake looking, though, so I wasn’t sure if this was supposed to represent a dead person or just a tacky souvenir from the gift shop.
We then learned about a local Native American legend, Chocura, and I was going to say something about this being a movie about Native American folklore that features no Native Americans… But I’m fairly certain that both Pet Sematary movies are perpetrators of the same crime… Not like Stephen King is a stranger to controversy, but… We get another choice line from Whitman, “You don’t think I’m crazy, do ya? But I mean I really dreamt it. But I’m not saying I’m psychic either ‘cause I don’t believe in that stuff.” The movie continues on and the only thing that keeps me going are the interactions between Whitman and Mr. Sheldon, Sheldon is just full of life and verve! He is the best actor and the best thing that happened to this movie. Also, halfway through things we get a zombie? What’s going on? The female ranger killed by the zombie is, I suppose, collected by Mr. Sheldon because he sets her up in his office with ropes (like a marionette puppet). He plays with her goopy neck flap and then slaps her for no reason. She’s already dead! Again, what’s going on? Sheldon then goes totally bonkers, dancing around to creepy music and he puts on an eerie mask. Ranger Whitman and the store owner (again, for no real reason) break into the lodge. They split up and Whitman finds the dead female ranger but he has basically no reaction! The store owner, Charlie, breaks two (2) of the windows on a door to get in… But there are already two (2) panels of the door’s glass missing… Not to mention that the door is MISSING IT’S DOORKNOB, so there was literally no reason to break and enter, he could have just entered. This movie is driving me nuts.
Charlie watches as Mr. Sheldon dances around a bunch of dead bodies in his living room (more crappy props)… But I don’t understand either man’s reaction to what they find? They both stumble upon horrifying scenes with at least one (1) dead body but the most they can muster up is a tiny frown. I’m a little more than a little confused! Also, where is the Winterbeast? And which beast is the Winterbeast? We have seen maybe three (3) or four (4) different creatures but none seemed definitively like they were the titular Winterbeast… Ugh. Some people out there really like this movie and I have a feeling I’m gonna want to have a word with them… A few words, actually, most of them only containing four (4) letters… Whitman wants to show Charlie something but it isn’t the strung up dead body of the female ranger… Are you fucking kidding me? Did that not strike him as odd? As something he should share with the class? They confront Mr. Sheldon after realizing that he has been purposefully summoning Chocura and trying to control it… But which one (1) is Chocura? Also, Sheldon just laughs and then his head catches fire and I guess he fucking dies. THEN WE JUST GO TO THE NEXT SCENE. NOTHING HAPPENS. They both go home and are chatting on the phone about how Whitman sent Stillman (the ranger who wears sunglasses at all times of day) out with a dinky little axe to cut down the shrine which Charlie wants to leave up (for the cash value). Stillman is attacked but does okay for a guy who was thrown by a giant monster! And then we just go on to the next scene like everything is fairly normal whereas if I was just attacked by a monster I would probably be getting the fuck out of town!
Whitman and Stillman go somewhere nondescript and end up “fighting” another creature but while Whitman falls in a hole for what feels like five (5) minutes, Stillman gets his head bitten off by the creature. Also, after all that goofy nonsense and those claymation creatures, the Winterbeast is just a guy in a devil costume. How boring is that? Yeah, he has some accessories and long straggly hair, but I don’t care about any of that, we had all these neat little claymation creatures and then the main guy is just a guy? How bland! I thought that this was going to be like Pumpkinhead and it was… In the way that this movie also blatantly copied off of Alien (and not in a flattering, clever, or entertaining way). We have a chest bursting scene and a mouth within a mouth. Cheap and strange (like the rest of the movie). The last scene is just Whitman and Charlie running around with the devil guy before the devil guy somehow explodes. “Next time we hunt for bears.” They say to each other then have a very hearty and fake laugh. We see a (handwritten) sign saying that the lodge is closed AND THEN THE CREDITS ROLL. This fucking movie.
