Skinwalker

In 1883, Alferd Packer was convicted of the murder of a group of travellers in the San Juan Mountains nine years previously, a case which became famous because he had also eaten their flesh. A bastardised version of Native legends was to grow up around Packer, suggesting that his transgression had led to him being possessed by a dangerous spirit, the wendigo, which drove him to (temporary) madness. Though this creature really belongs to eastern peoples, it was often confused with the skinwalker, a similarly hungry spirit which could be invoked by interfering with funerary rites. Robert Conway's latest western, set in 1883 on the nearby ?Colorado Plateau, presents its own version of the skinwalker and echoes an underlying theme in the Packer story: that white men who choose to wander in dangerous terrain really ought to listen to the Native people if they want to stay alive.

That they haven't been paying attention is immediately clear when wandering hunters Benny (Nathaniel Burns) and Hugo (Conway himself) stumble upon a platform burial and declare it to be Apache. Benny then helps himself to a piece of jewellery lying on the corpse, unaware or uncaring that it's there to prevent the deceased spirit from returning. Before long, he's dead and Hugo is possessed, ravenously pursuing strangers. He is waylaid and held prisoner at a local farm, but with bandits in the area and just three young women left behind to guard him whilst their man (Daniel Link) tries to return the jewellery to the local tribe, the stage is set for further trouble. The country has already been ravaged by plague, local lawmen are busy trying to find a jail to hold the bandit leader's wife (Eva Hamilton), and whatever has overwhelmed Hugo, it's infectious.

Conway's film has far too much plot, leaving him with too little time to develop individual characters, but it manages to hold its narrative together as we come and go between different groups, their stories gradually becoming more closely intertwined. The performances are adequate, albeit generally lacking in charisma, and the natural landscape, little changed during the intervening years, gives the production some personality. Conway isn't particularly adept at creating suspense but the tangled forest and thick undergrowth keeps us alert to the possibility of danger, whether from a human-set ambush or something else.

What's disappointing here - at least to those unfamiliar with Conway's work - is how little he has managed to do with such rich source material. His skinwalkers, seriously creepy in most stories, come across as little more than run of the mill zombies. A handful of scenes deal with the distress experienced by those who can feel themselves gradually being possessed but the flimsy way the characters are sketched means that this doesn't impact in the way it should. The special effects are of variable quality, the production design competent but uninspired.

Had Skinwalkers been just a little rougher at the edges, just a little more slapdash, it might have been highly entertaining. Unfortunately it's a victim of its own sincerity, landing in an unhappy no man's land where only devoted fans of the monster movie genre will wish to tread.