Short Film: Liminality

This roughly 12-minute short film, released in 2008 and directed by James Lujan was made by First Nation filmmakers and uses the myth of the Wendigo as its basis. Now, I have been criticised in the past for covering media containing the wendigo – one commentator in particular was very determined that the wendigo could not be classed as a vampire. To be fair, I am selective when I cover the wendigo; some films lend themselves to being classed under the wider vampire umbrella, with the cannibalistic creature displaying vampiric traits, and some less so. In this case the filmmakers themselves make a definitive tie to the vampire within the film.

the bar

It starts with Cody (Cody Lightning) entering a sleazy bar. The camera takes in the customers as he heads to the bartender, Glog (Mark Reed), and asks for the cheapest beer they have. He’s looking for Captain Hawthorn (Pierre Barrera), Cody’s Uncle, and Glog laughs, he knows an Aaron Hawthorn but he ain’t no Captain. Eventually he wakes a drunk at the bar. Cody says he has a message from Penelope and holds up a chain but Hawthorn is dismissive and heads to the pool table.

wendigo at the bar

Cody tells Glog that Hawthorn was from a group of elite wendigo hunters, as he explains them Glog likens them to vampires. Cody then suggests that he needs his Uncle’s help, the Reservation was attacked by Wendigo but they weren’t like normal. Instead of loners they worked as a pack and the same killing techniques didn’t uniformly work. They have killed all the Reservation including Penelope – Cody’s mother and Hawthorn’s sister. They came as bikers and Cody believes the only sure fire way of dealing with them is the hunting group he believes Hawthorn was part of. Then he hears the sound of bikes arriving…

wendigo

This is a neat little story with the wendigo being very vampire-like indeed. The methods of killing that sometimes work are all from the standard vampire playbook – the use of holy water that is mentioned is tied to the wendigo being susceptible to whatever belief they had before turning – so a Christian will be susceptible to Christian iconography. The short, at time of writing, is available on Fawesome.tv.

The imdb page is here.