Probably the most wintry film this side of The Shining, Ghostkeeper may draw comparisons to the epic Kubrick classic as it also has a remote mountain lodge, characters who are snowed in, plus associated recreational vehicles – snowcats and snowmobiles.
Ghostkeeper also has a whiff of Larry Fessenden’s Wendigo, admittedly largely in the form of a misspelled title card, but snowshoe-horned in to give this film’s Overlook Hotel – the Deer Lodge – a bit of Indigenous mystery/intrigue.
As the late Friends star and Ottawan Matthew Perry might’ve put it, could this film BE any more Canadian? Three snowmobilers out riding in the Alberta Rockies are caught in a New Year’s eve blizzard. The premise of shinny players stranded overnight in a hockey arena would be the only way to up the Canuck quotient.
Riders Jenny, Marty and Chrissy take refuge in the remote mountain lodge, immediately noticing that the heat is still on (on a few floors at least) though the structure appears otherwise wholly abandoned.
They soon encounter a creepy elderly woman, either a squatter or a caretaker, lurking in the kitchen – a lady who takes umbrage with the winter travellers asking too many questions, but who offers to put them up for the night regardless, each in their own accommodations.
The trio Jenny, Marty and Chrissy are actually more interesting than their infantilized names might suggest. In fact, they’ve got a quite adult dynamic, with Marty making an awful joke about STDs. Turns out, Marty and brunette Jenny were a thing, and now there’s tension between he and blonde Chrissy.
One could say that Marty possibly sticking it in Chrissy, is sticking in Jenny’s craw.
The sexual tension is amplified throughout, with Chrissy stripping for a candlelit bath, and Marty and Jenny’s off and possibly on-again relationship drama continuing throughout the evening. After all, there’s nothing else to do but wait until daylight to resume their travels.
But there are people (not to mention a haunting anthropomorphic ski lodge) with other ideas.
Ghostkeeper is a snow-deep slow burn, the kindest way possible to say it drags. But it’s also disarming in its own quirky way, a talky, character-driven effort that attempts to do as much as it can with a pretty thin premise.
Director Jim Makichuk also gave us the underrated made-for-TV dystopian horror, The Tower, in which a building’s supposedly state-of-the-art security system, goes haywire.
*** (out of 5)
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