BA_Harrison As The Shining (1980) proved, an empty, snowbound mountainside hotel can be a very effective setting for a horror film. Unfortunately, writer and director of Ghostkeeper Jim Makichuk is no Kubrick, nor is he Stephen King. Any attempts at creating atmospheric chills are negated by a dreary script, annoying characters, and a plodding pace that makes 89 minutes seem a lot, lot longer (the last half an hour took me ninety minutes to complete).The film starts as three friends, couple Jenny and Marty (Riva Spier and Murray Ord) and blonde Chrissy (Sheri McFadden), make their way to a lodge in the mountains for New Year. Their winter break takes a sinister turn when they decide to skidoo past a 'Keep Out' sign, winding up at a seemingly abandoned hotel. With one of the skidoos suffering from mechanical trouble, and the weather taking a turn for the worse, the trio take shelter in the hotel, where they encounter a strange old woman who shares the building with her two sons, one of which happens to be a flesh-eating creature called a Windigo.With lots of wandering through deep snow and around the hotel's gloomy corridors, but little in the way of plot progression, scares or gore, there isn't much to recommend this movie. According to IMDB's trivia, money started to run out halfway through production, which helps explain why the latter part of the film is so incoherent; it doesn't explain why the entire movie is so bloody boring.

yourmotheratemydog715 A slow-burn (or should I say slow-freeze) chiller set deep in the snowy mountains of Canada, GHOSTKEEPER is effective at creating an atmosphere and not very effective at doing anything with it.Three friends snowmobiling around the middle of nowhere for New Year's Eve soon find themselves stranded at a strange hotel, abandoned except for a mysterious old woman who seems to be keeping something from them. It sounds like a solid set-up for a generic '80s slasher, and I've seen the film often categorized as such, but I'd hesitate to call it one.It's certainly not a "teens in the woods get picked off one by one by a madman" movie. It's instead a "slow descent into madness" type of movie; imagine if THE SHINING had a no-name Canadian cast and wasn't really very good.That being said, icicles of atmosphere hang all over this thing. I always felt Paul Zaza to be an underrated player in the composer game, and his score here is wonderful. Understated and mysterious, GHOSTKEEPER would be practically nothing without it. It's also decently well-shot and the locations are beautiful.A solid build-up unfortunately melts away in the second half. Characters who acted very similarly the entire film suddenly act completely different. Other characters show up randomly just to be immediately slaughtered. Everything feels very scattershot and aimless.I feel like the film is very close to becoming a spot-on representation of a certain kind of Wendigo myth: a Wendigo that does not hunt as a beast, but instead rattles the aching, snow-addled minds around it into a cabin fever psychosis. Unfortunately, GHOSTKEEPER just doesn't quite get it right. Worth a look for fans of atmospheric horror, but by no means a must-see.

lazarillo A bickering young couple and their sexy female friend are snowmobiling in the (Canadian?) wilderness when they run across an old hotel where they are forced to seek shelter from a sudden winter storm. At first the hotel seems to deserted, but then they run into a strange old woman who claims to be the caretaker and alludes to a having couple of "kids" "around somewhere". As night falls one of the girls disappears and the remaining pair realizes all is not as it seems in the hotel. This movie can be easily written-off as a cheap, Canadian rip-off of "The Shining", but that's not entirely fair--it also rips-off other movies like "The Sentinel" pretty severely. And it tries, very ham-handedly, to mine the native Canadian legend of the wendigo (spelled "windigo here for some reason).This movie has very little going for it. The plot is pretty dumb and derivative. The dialogue is generally clunky (except maybe for a funny scene where the sexy blonde friend tells a story about seducing a substitute teacher when she was in high school). The characters range from bland to genuinely dislikeable (especially the guy). The girls both look good in their snowsuits but have no nude scenes, which doesn't have to be a deal-breaker except that the movie has one of those famous non-nude bathtub scenes just to kind of rub in the actual dearth of real skin. The one good thing I can say about this movie is that it does have a pretty effective atmosphere. The gloomy, snowbound hotel is eerie and portentous, even if there is no real payoff to justify all the eerie portentiousness.This movie was made in the early 80's when the American horror film industry was starting to go south (figuratively), and the Canadian film industry, encourage by friendly tax laws, started to go south (literally). This movie is a little more ambitious than most of the Canadian tax shelter projects in that it wasn't content to be just another "Halloween" slasher movie knock-off. It kind of reminded me of "Death Ship", so if you liked that. . . It's hard to find to find these days though and probably not worth looking too hard for.

EyeAskance Poorly distributed(or unreleased) when the horror-film market was predominantly angled toward the slasher element, this low-key B effort is not bad at all, and should probably be reevaluated by genre fans. A trio of young snowmobilers face mechanical problems deep in the forest, and happen upon a decrepit, isolated hunting lodge. Initially, they believe the place to be abandoned, but eventually find it inhabited by a strange old lady and her son...as well as their "pet" Wendigo(a spirit of Native American lore, ever hungry for human flesh). While there's not a lot of meat on the bones of this story, a subtle, lurking eeriness makes up heartily for that fact. And while the production values are a step below par, GHOSTKEEPER methodically maintains the slow and steady momentum of a dying heartbeat, punctuated by it's lonely, foreboding atmosphere. All in all, a small-scale achievement which generally delivers.6/10...recommended.