Director(s)	Christopher Thies
Principal Cast	Tim Morgan as Whitman Mike Magri as Stillman Charles Majka as Charlie Bob Harlow as Mr. Sheldon
Release Date	1992
Language(s)	English
Running Time	77 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

Sergeant Whitman gazes upon a person smiling on a chair. Despite being privy to the person’s face from the start of the scene, Whitman only reacts in aghast to the deformities on the person’s face when the film cuts to a face reveal for the audience. Out of nowhere, a stop-motion skeleton figure makes its appearance and we cut to Whitman reacting in an increased panic at the spectral entity; there is no effort made to incorporate both the live action and stop-motion visual into one scene and Whitman’s reaction is the only connective tissue letting the viewer know this is all taking place in the same environment. To add to the chaos, the deformed person starts to rip at his own flesh. This disturbing sequence is then revealed to be Whitman’s nightmare as he tosses and turns in bed.

However, instead of easing the viewer in to the story by showing the sleeping character, Whitman, waking up and confirming the vision before getting to their day-to-day, Winterbeast instead chooses to cut to another equally out-of-context nightmarish scene, this time of a skeletal creature coming out of another man’s stomach. Then, the story cuts to two completely different characters, Ranger Stillman (Mike Magri) and Dick (Bill MacLeod), providing the viewer no context by which to ground that which came previously. Whitman eventually shows up to the station and is informed by Stillman, who we learn works for the former, that Dick, an on-goer, found one of Whitman’s other rangers, Bradford (Lissa Breer), abandoned in the mountain and was unable to find another ranger, Tello (David Mica), accompanying her. The group makes plans to investigate the trail the next day.

Suddenly, the scene changes and we cut to a completely different woman. She gets undressed in her abode when another stop-motion creature, a large tree, enters the area she’s in. A slasher-styled P.O.V shot is used to show the creature approaching the woman. He reaches and grabs her from her room; the film opts to transform the woman into a stop-motion figure to keep visual consistency with the tree-monster. The monster then slams the woman’s body against the wall, seemingly killing her.

This haphazard cutting from and to scenes with whiplash-inducing changes in perspective are par for the course in Winterbeast, a fascinating movie that operates on pure kinetic momentum and nothing more. Continuity in narrative or within scenes matters less than entertaining at every stop along the way which is why the movie constantly meanders from point to point with a loose reverence for earlier narrative threads ; the focus is always getting to the next moment of violence, context be damned. The structure of the movie diverges very little from this opening structure: the characters gather information about, or seemingly about the disappearance and then a different stop-motion creature kills another character, usually unrelated to the story outside of their carnage candy role.

If there is a larger overarching plot, it’s about Whitman and company trying to circumvent a Jaws mayoral-like figure in the form of the town lodge’s owner, Mr. Sheldon (Bob Harlow), who refuses to close the lodge down despite the mystery surrounding the disappearance and the resulting supernatural phenomena. Unfortunately, while the plot synopsis seems like a springboard to jump off of, Winterbeast makes very little use of it. Nothing in the story is built up enough to generate an investment on the part of the viewer. The characters have very little to say to one another in the ways of motivation or traits, the different monsters/creatures that the story utilizes have no coherent overarching identity or relevant differentiable characteristics, and the acting is so far removed from the spectacle that it becomes impossible to care about what’s happening outside of sheer curiosity.

There’s an attempt to couch the mystery within a Native Indian dressing that even goes so far as to suggest one of Whitman’s friend’s, Charlie (Charles Majka), is a stand-in for Natives within the context of the story, but then does nothing to explain or relate any of the violence or the mystery proper to the Natives outside of the most superficial sense of possible; they might as well not have been in the the movie at all which is a shame because the proximity to the Natives is one of the only consistent visuals in the mise-en-scène.

Without any genuine way to relate to the narrative, all the movie has going for it is the spectacle, and the quality of what it has to offer is inconsistent at best. Outside of the general incongruity resulting between treating the pure stop-motion scenes and the live action as part of the same environment, the sound design is severely disorienting. While the movie tries to use its soundtrack in the vein of Halloween to ratchet up the tension and create a feeling of the dread, it fails to evoke the slightest sense of unease ; because the track often noticeably cuts before looping back in on itself during longer scenes, any notion of tension immediately dissipates and the audio becomes farcical. This feeling is exacerbated by poor sound mixing; the score and/or background-noises like the wind or leaves become so loud as to obscure the dialogue or one another, culminating in scenes where the impact of any.

In spite of that, where director Christopher Theis and producer Mark Frizzell’s Winterbeast succeeds is in its sheer dedication to presenting a cinematic “something. Just like Obayashi does in House, they impart such passion to presenting a vision, albeit a vision that seems incomprehensible by most measures, that one can’t help get caught up in at least appreciating the effort. For all its issues, if there’s one thing Winterbeast is not it’s lacking in passion. Where other teams might see the inability to properly incorporate their stop-motion creatures with the live action nature of their shooting and subsequently can the creatures in lieu of something more tame, this movie opts for the full vision, no holds barred. If the people and monsters can’t mingle directly, then P.O.V shots and stop-motion people will have to suffice; it’s better than fully compromising on the spectacle of what-could-be.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Winterbeast is a movie of pure passion that’s put together with no other purpose than to stay consistently entertaining. It sacrifices narrative coherence, thematic resonance, character development, and even visual continuity to ensure that spectacle upon spectacle can be presented; the movie so fervently goes for broke in trying to do something that in spite of all its failures its not a miserable experience. Echoing the poster tagline, the movie “must be seen to be believed.”
Rating	1.5/10
Grade	F

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