Rebecca L. Willoughby
Mother Earth has been pillaged, / Stripped of her life’s blood. / A violation that has awakened / The malevolent spirit. / Seeking the lost, the frail, / And the depraved… (Antlers, 2021)
While contemporary audiences are often aware of the wendigo legend as a result of recent films and video games, it is important to note the shifts this folk tale has undergone as it is translated from the cultural traditions of the Native American peoples from which it originated into its current form. Here, we explore the enduring aspects of the legend as it has moved into the present time and popular culture, and discuss the use of this mythological figure within mostly White contexts: do these representations honor the long history of the wendigo as a cautionary tale? Or do they continue to appropriate the past as a frightening unknown in order to tell White stories?
The wendigo tale originates from the Cree and Ojibwa peoples of the Algonquian nation. It can be understood as a dark spirit or as a literal being associated with winter. Because written accounts are based in European understanding of the tale, there is some variation in how the phenomenon is interpreted: in some records, representations of the wendigo as a creature was humanoid, but emaciated to a skeletal state, with glowing eyes, claw-like hands, and a heart of ice (Atwood 65). A common feature is a lack of lips: its insatiable hunger means it has eaten them off. Often this creature takes on aspects of leafless trees, appearing willowy and tall, connected with the densely forested areas of Northern New England and Canada. Many stories include a peculiar smell that precedes its appearance, in addition to a voice like the wind that calls to the deepest parts of a person’s spirit (Atwood 65). This creature unendingly craves human flesh, and devours those who hear its call.
In contrast to this boogeyman-like depiction is the understanding of a wendigo spirit that might possess human hosts in the most dire circumstances. This iteration of the wendigo emphasizes that all wendigos were once human, but have been corrupted by an evil spirit that leads them to become obsessed with eating human flesh, a potential consequence of the extremely harsh winters in the locations where the legend has its roots (DeSanti 188). In this interpretation, we can understand the emaciated appearance and sunken eyes due to starvation, as well as a smell associated with decomposition. It signifies a spiritual and psychological transformation of a person that hinges on a loss of empathy with others and lack of community—it is essentially greedy and selfish, prioritizing its own survival to the most extreme ends.
Both of these interpretations are connected to maintaining social norms around community and sustainability that are central to Native American belief and survival. Shawn Smallman notes that while according to the legend, “all wendigos were once human,” with time, “wendigos could also transform into physical monsters of great size that spoke with a whistling voice and could paralyze their victims with fear” (573). Among these North American tribes, there was a “universal revulsion” toward wendigos that reached extremes of murder: Algonquins believed that once a person had tasted human flesh, even if in extremity, that taste would remain and grow, justifying killing those who could become dangerous to others. These stories are a warning against privileging self over others, an idea essential to the continuation of the Northern peoples to which the tradition belongs. As a descendant of White European settlers, I might also see connections to stories from my own cultural tradition that instill similar values: food-motivated Hansel immediately springs to mind, or those cautions against lingering in the wilderness one might glean from tales of Little Red Riding Hood.
Yet this is largely not the representation that has come down to us as modern consumers of popular culture in a (currently) predominantly White country. Recent film and video game representations of the wendigo draw more on its being a creature, but in some cases do include the possession aspects. Here, we’ll examine some of the most recent appearances of the wendigo figure in contemporary films, focusing on Scott Cooper’s 2021 Antlers, how they use the wendigo legend as folk horror, and how those representations both perpetuate and mutate Native cultural tradition.
Folk horror tends to rest on a tension between rural and urban, backwoods and mainstream, the wild and the civilized. Bernice Murphy points out the reliance of “rural” communities on a closeness to the land, superstition, and beliefs in ‘old’ stories as a contrast to modernity and enlightenment, “communit[ies] or household[s] that fall under the spell of arcane influences that thrive in the shadows cast by wilderness” (140). Here, of course, the rural beliefs are Native, and civilization equates to White civilization and culture. Some of the films under examination here preserve this dichotomy, but others create new ones between different cohorts of that White civilization, which is a feature of social stratification to explore more deeply.
One of the most familiar European interpretations of the wendigo story, and where we begin to see the shifts in its meaning in predominantly White culture, is in the 1910 novella, “The Wendigo” by Algernon Blackwood. Though the initial mentions of the wendigo appear in the records of settlers as early as 1639, it was Blackwood’s story that truly began to popularize the folk tale in fiction. It’s worth stopping here to tease apart how this narrative represents the Native legend and adapts it for its own use.
Blackwood’s account concerns a small group of settlers in search of moose in the Canadian wilderness. The party includes two Scotsmen, psychologist Dr. Cathcart and his nephew, a divinity student called Simpson, two guides— Hank, who loves colorful expletives, and Defago, a French-Canadian tradesman—and a Native cook called Punk. Early on Blackwood singles out Defago as being “fascinated” with the life of the “backwoods,” and “susceptible […] to that singular spell which the wilderness lays upon certain lonely natures [..] as a rule, it was too long a spell of ‘civilization’ that induced these attacks, for a few days in the wilderness invariably cured them (Blackwood 2). Here is set up the tension between the vast, untamable wilderness in which the White men seek to exist, and which the non-White and mixed-heritage characters in the story represent, and their idea of civilization. In the story, when the party splits up and Simpson and Defago strike out to find moose in a remote (and assumedly haunted) area called Fifty Island Water, Defago is lured by the wendigo and swept up by the spirit for several days, his compatriots following his improbably-spaced footprints through the snow and woods until they disappear. At several points they are beset by Defago’s echoing lament about his “burning feet of fire,” which seems to come from above the trees. An odd smell permeates the main camp early in the story, as well as the fireside of Simpson and Defago before he is taken. At one point, a sinister version of Defago appears at the campsite of the search party, but Hank realizes that his old friend is an imposter and the monster escapes. Though Defago eventually re-appears, he is inexorably altered, with no memory of his ordeal, and subsequently dies. The rest of the men never speak of their terrifying ordeal in the woods, one that shakes Cathcart’s faith in science.
Embedded in Blackwood’s story are elements of narratives collected by Hudson Bay Company men who worked closely with the indigenous populations of that area in the decades preceding the story’s publication, including accounts of indigenous individuals taken with what came to be known as “wendigo psychosis” that recalled “walking in the air” and being “always on the tops of the trees” (Smallman 577). However, Blackwood’s story is very clearly meant to allude to the wildness inherent in the North American landscape and the way that wildness might impact certain individuals from more ‘civilized’ backgrounds. Notably, the men react disapprovingly to Defago’s inclination toward melancholy when faced with long stretches without being in nature.
Jumping ahead to more recent cinematic representations of the wendigo and how the legend is currently being utilized in popular culture, some of these aspects of early wendigo stories will be preserved.
The Wendigo (2022) is the most recent film featuring the indigenous, folkloric wendigo creature. It’s a found-footage film that owes a debt to The Blair Witch Project (1999), but with somewhat less-adept characters: a YouTuber desperate for views is dared by his viewers to go alone to a secluded, wooded area purported to be haunted by the wendigo. When he disappears, his influencer friends—similarly maladapted to hiking, camping, or nature—trek into the woods to find him while also filming their journey for views. What befalls these young people does align with nineteenth-century European interpretations of the wendigo as a psychosis or possession by a malevolent woodland spirit, wherein those afflicted individuals would develop a cannibalistic obsession. The wendigo ‘takes over’ each member of the party until they all succumb to the evil. The wendigo itself is depicted as being comprised of collections of tree branches.
Larry Fessenden’s Wendigo (2001) ties the phenomenon to psychosis through characters, and is a clearer representation of civilization vs. the wilderness in those characters and their associated locations. George, a troubled cinematographer, and his psychologist wife, Kim, leave ‘the city’ with their young son Miles for a weekend in the Catskills. On the way they accidentally hit a large deer with their car, providing an unsatisfying conclusion to a hunt for several local hunters. Miles is especially disturbed by the encounter, and is haunted for days by the deer’s death until he visits a local store and is given a wendigo figurine by a mysterious Native man no one else can see. Meanwhile tensions develop between his parents and the hunters. When George is shot while sleighing with Miles and returns wounded to the cottage, the wendigo looms above him in Miles’s vision. George subsequently dies, and it’s apparent Miles controls the wendigo through the talisman of the figurine when he turns the vicious creature on the hunter who shot his father.
In The Last Winter (2006), an Arctic drilling team is beset by strange occurrences as they attempt to ascertain the plausibility of re-opening an oil well in Alaska. One environmentalist charts the wild fluctuations and unseasonable behavior of the land while company employees push to bring in heavy equipment and begin construction. This film is the clearest example of the wendigo awakening due to human intervention and exploitation of the land; two native members of the drilling team discuss the spirit as a way in which the land fights back against these intrusions. When the wendigo is finally revealed, it follows a ghostly stampede of indigenous braves on horseback rushing through the darkness, and is depicted as a giant deer/bison figure with glowing eyes that sweeps the environmentalist up in a spectral wind and simultaneously devours the leader of the drilling team. Its appearance signals the start of a global climate apocalypse.
The variety of these films allows us examine how genres and subgenres intersect in productive ways with folk horror. The Wendigo, for instance, utilizes folklore as an urban legend, encouraging digital natives to explore the unknown wilderness and record the chaos that results. The Last Winter leans into eco-horror, echoing the epigraph the audience first encounters in Antlers, which lays the fault of the existence of the wendigo creature at the feet of those who have exploited the landscape of the Pacific Northwest setting for their own gain. Fessenden’s Wendigo resists generic categorization, and aside from Antlers is the most firmly folk horror entry of the bunch, taking as it does one of the clearest stances on the urban vs. rural and civilization vs. backwoods behavior. That these narratives have all been produced in the last twenty years speaks not only to folk horror’s resurgence but also to the forces this subset of horror tropes addresses.
Antlers confuses and complicates these boundaries in interesting ways. The film begins in a defunct mine in Cispus Falls, Oregon, where Frank Weaver and another man cook methamphetamine deep within; in the opening scenes, the two men are attacked by an unseen beast; Frank escapes and his friend is killed.
Based on the short story, “The Quiet Boy” by Nick Antosca, the narrative is primarily viewed through the eyes of Julia Meadows, a young teacher who has returned to the town of Cispus Falls after fleeing her own father’s abuse. She left behind a younger brother, Paul, who is now the town’s police chief and with whom she lives with while she ‘gets on her feet.’ It is implied she has struggled with addiction, particularly alcoholism, in her past.
In her class is Frank’s oldest son, Lucas, who is tormented by his classmates and appears isolated, wearing dirty clothes to school each day and avoiding other children. When Julia asks her students to create their own fairy tales, Lucas draws illustrations for a story featuring three wolves, wherein it’s clear the meanest and most violent wolf is his father, and that Lucas serves as a mediator to keep both Frank and younger brother (wolf) Aiden in check so they don’t “go to town and eat people.” Julia is disturbed by his story and other things Lucas has told her, and goes to his home with the intent of talking with Frank. She finds a dilapidated, boarded-up house but is suspicious of what could be inside. When she takes her concerns to the school’s principal, she, too, visits the house. This woman enters and finds Aiden looking sickly, but is attacked and killed by Frank, who transforms into a wendigo and escapes the house.
Later, police find Aiden and Frank’s ‘old’ bodies in the house, and Lucas is taken in by Julia and Paul. Wendigo/Frank comes looking for Lucas and wounds Paul, takes the boy and escapes to the mine. Julia finds Lucas, Aiden, and Wendigo Frank deep within the mine. She kills Frank, and convinces Lucas that they must also kill Aiden before he fully transforms. He covers his ears as Julia stabs Aiden in the heart with a knife.
The final scenes of the film find Paul, Julia, and Lucas on the shores of a lake, the mist hanging over the mountains in the distance. In contrast to the opening shots, the setting here is completely natural, showing none of the man-made, broken-down infrastructure indicative of Cispus Falls throughout the rest of the film. Lucas plays at the water’s edge while Paul and Julia look on, discussing the boy’s fate. Julia asserts that they are responsible for him now, as he has no one else. Paul suggests that this is like “living with a tiger cub.” Lucas approaches and Julia wipes a dark stain from Lucas’s upper lip. As they turn to leave, Paul coughs, bringing up dark fluid.
While Paul is the one hesitant to keep Lucas, it’s unclear whether it’s because he fears Lucas may somehow begin to transform into a Wendigo like his father and brother, or just because he’s been scarred by the horrific events we’ve seen in the film, a victim of trauma not unlike him and his sister. But Paul appears to be the one most likely to transform since he’s been attacked by the wendigo himself, giving a different meaning to his statement, “do you think you can kill something you love?” Julia may well have to face this question again if Paul’s transformation arc follows that of Frank and Aiden.
A lot of these films feature ONE native (usually a man) who imparts the story of the wendigo to curious Whites desperate to make meaning from the violence and mystery that imbues the narrative they find themselves in. In Fessenden’s Wendigo, it’s the mysterious man in the gift shop who gives Miles the wendigo figurine. The Last Winter features two indigenous characters, Lee and Dawn: after discussing whether they think the wendigo is the cause of the strange occurrences at their Arctic outpost, Lee disappears and Dawn goes insane and kills another member of the team before being accidentally killed herself. In Antlers, former sheriff Warren Stokes is portrayed by well-known Native actor Graham Greene, and he explains the wendigo to Paul and Julia when they seek answers regarding the grisly murders in the town. Though this nod to the origins of the wendigo legends is helpful in grounding the stories in their indigenous roots, the narratives themselves have different concerns stemming from the predominantly White culture that is producing them.
Antlers, in particular, translates folk horror tropes of rural vs. civilization into a tension between “the lost and the frail” from the film’s epigraph and other, more privileged White society. The lack of industry in Cispus Falls is apparent in the scenery, and Frank Weaver is ostensibly cooking meth not only to feed a habit, but also to earn money for his family. This is the situation that appears to make him vulnerable to the wendigo spirit. Though Julia is also traumatized—there are several allusions to she and Paul being abused by their father—she is also in a position to ‘rescue’ Lucas, to ‘save’ him from the wildness inherent in the wendigo figure. It’s worth considering that the end of the film calls her ability to do so into question. She may not be able to save Lucas or her brother, implying that nature/the wilderness will always prevail. Further, the afflictions that mark the White characters in this film— economic struggle, substance abuse, and the consequences of generational trauma—are historically those that have plagued Native populations in the U.S. following colonization.
Do those aspects make the use of the wendigo figure to address those cultural anxieties a type of egregious cultural appropriation? Is the proliferation of the wendigo legend in folk horror an homage to the history of the land on which the narratives take place? Do these narratives, and the implication that in the face of such forces the forces of nature will overtake us, speak to a prevalence of nihilistic feeling about civilization at the present moment? I don’t propose to answer these questions here, but rather to highlight this continuing trend and advocate for additional and accurate representation of Native peoples in this and all types of media as we become an increasingly diverse nation ourselves.
Bibliography
Antlers. Directed by Scott Cooper, performances by Keri Russell, Jesse Plemons, Graham Greene, Amy Madigan. Searchlight Pictures, 2021.
Antosca, Nick. “The Quiet Boy.” Guernica Magazine. 28 January 2019.
Atwood, Margaret. “Eyes of Blood, Heart of Ice: The Wendigo.” Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995, 62-86.
Blackwood, Algernon. The Wendigo. Project Gutenberg, 31 January 2004, Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Dave Morgan.
Collis, Clark. “Why Antlers director Scott Cooper would not have made horror film without Guillermo del Toro’s help.” Entertainment Weekly, 27 Oct. 2021.
DeSanti, Brady. “The Cannibal Talking Head: The Portrayal of the Windigo ‘Monster’ in Popular Culture and Ojibwe Tradition.” The Journal of Popular Religion and Culture, 27:32, Fall 2015.
Howard, Alfie. “Windigo Violence and Resistance.” Genealogy 2024, 8, 50. School of English, University of Leeds.
Last Winter, The. Directed by Larry Fessenden, performances by Ron Perlman and Connie Britton. Antidote Films, Glass Eye Pix, and Zik Zak Filmworks, 2006.
Oldak, Sean; Anthony Maristany and Brianna Sa. “Wendigo Psychosis and Psychiatric Perspectives of Cannibalism: A Complex Interplay of Culture, Psychology, and History.” Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, 17 October 2023.
Murphy, Bernice. “Folk Horror,” The Cambridge Companion to American Horror, Cambridge UP, 2022, 139-153.
Smallman, Shawn. Spirit beings, Mental Illness, and Murder: Fur Traders and the Windigo in Canada’s Boreal Forest, 1774-1935. Ethnohistory, 57:4 (Fall 2010). DOI: 10.1215/00141801-2010-037, 2010.
Wendigo, The. Directed by Jake Robinson. Terror Films, 2022.
Wendigo. Directed by Larry Fessenden, performances by Jake Weber and Patricia Clarkson. Magnolia Pictures, 2001.
Rebecca Willoughby is an Assistant Professor and Executive Director of Student Success and First-Year Experience at Commonwealth University—
