DANCING WITH WEREWOLVES AND DYSFUNCTION.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

WITH HIS NEW MOVIE, ``Wendigo,'' filmmaker Larry Fessenden completes a trilogy of horror he began 11 years ago with the Frankenstein fable ``No Telling'' and the 1997 urban vampire story ``Habit.''

These previous efforts were barely seen, and the low-budget ``Wendigo,'' which sees Fessenden taking on the werewolf, probably won't find much of an audience, either, a shame since it's a pretty good little thriller.

Fessenden is fascinated by the way mythology shapes our lives and how we use stories to deal with the hard knocks the world hands us. ``Wendigo'' takes its name from a shape-shifting Indian legend that is part animal, part vegetable and part human. You've seen it before, albeit in different form, if you're an ``X-Files'' diehard or had the misfortune to see the cannibal misfire ``Ravenous.''

That you see it at all in ``Wendigo'' is the movie's biggest fault since the creature looks like a mescaline-addled freak running around in a deer suit. There's nothing like a puppet to spoil an ominous mood, and in this respect, Fessenden should have taken a lesson from another low-budget horror film - ``The Blair Witch Project'' - and realized the scariest things can often lie in the imagination.

He certainly adheres to that philosophy in the film's spellbinding first hour, which follows a Manhattan family on a winter weekend escape to a cabin in the Catskills. For the McClarens, the trip is a stab at togetherness, but it's obvious that they're not practiced at the art of domesticity.

Kim (Patricia Clarkson), a psychotherapist, never strays far from her cell phone, and husband George (Jake Weber) possesses a deep well of repressed anger. (In other words, he's a typical New Yorker.) That all isn't right between them isn't lost on their 8-year-old son, Miles (``Malcolm in the Middle's'' Erik Per Sullivan), an angst-ridden tot who looks at life through fear-fueled owl eyes.

Miles' anxieties go through the roof when the family's Volvo accidentally hits a deer on the way to the cabin. The damage to the car is the least of the problems. The real threat arrives in the form of a hunter named Otis (John Speredakos), who seems to have stepped straight from the backwoods of ``Deliverance'' and is none too pleased about his deer's antlers being broken.

The specter of Otis looms large over the rest of the movie, as Fessenden creates a creepy sense of dread through the use of sound and small, specific details. His actors aid him superbly here, portraying their characters with an unforced intuitiveness that makes the movie's horror both authentic and heartbreaking. Family dynamics have rarely seemed this natural.

That ``Wendigo'' goes off into the realm of mythological mumbo-jumbo at the end is a shame, especially since the boy's imagination plays such a significant role in the mayhem at the conclusion. In this respect, ``Wendigo'' is much like ``The Shining,'' where a boy's best friend can be found in the comfort of his own head.

WENDIGO - Three stars

(Rated R: violent images, a strong sex scene and language)

Starring: Jake Weber, Patricia Clarkson, Erik Per Sullivan, John Speredakos.

Director: Larry Fessenden.

Running time :1 hr. 31 min.

Playing: Laemmle's Fairfax Cinemas in Los Angeles.