Larry Fessenden’s recent film “The Last Winter” earned praise, but a specific few did the obvious and compared the wintery thriller to John Carpenter’s similarly supernatural “The Thing.” Some even drew a more direct comparison — the under-the-radar Fessenden has directed an impressive output of challenging horror films, from the animal-cruelty parable “No Telling” to the nightmarish fairy-tale corrective “Wendigo,” that rival Carpenter’s late seventies-early eighties output.
He’s also been a major player in the indie film scene, his Glass Eye Pix producing fare like “Wendy And Lucy” and shepherding the work of neophyte helmers like Ti West (“The House of the Devil”). And eagle-eyed fans recognize Fessenden from an endless list of oddball cameos- the NY-based filmmaker once hosted a presentation of his onscreen deaths at the now-defunct Two Boots Theater in downtown Manhattan.
For now, the giant-browed multi-hyphenate might be trading his cult popularity for mainstream acceptance. Fessenden has come on to direct an American remake of the Spanish chiller “The Orphanage.” Fessenden will be working from a script by him and horror buddy Guillermo Del Toro, an adaptation of a Del Toro-produced ’05 film about a woman who returns to her old orphanage, only to learn shocking facts about her son’s “imaginary friends.” The original was directed by Juan Antonio Bayona (who was seemingly set for the “Twilight: Eclipse” gig, but never got the call for some reason).
New Line is producing the film, and a call is out to all middle-aged actresses to play the lead- preferably homely, considering the original film. While we’re against American remakes of recent foreign films (the only thing they’re updating, on several occasions, is the language), there’s a very short list of genre directors that get us excited about upcoming horror films, original or otherwise, and Fessenden and Del Toro belong on the list. Del Toro also shepherded the original project to fruition, so his presence behind the scenes is reassuring. Fessenden — once heralded as the heir apparent to modern horror, but has never quite fufilled that promise — meanwhile, has comfortably lived on the fringes of the horror filmmaking scene, and it’s hard to see someone like him xerox’ing the original when his distinct, abstract, slow-burning style has its own unsettling vibe.