Ghostkeeper-Cedar Herald Index

Ghostkeeper is a 1981 Canadian supernatural slasher film directed by James Makichuk, and starring Riva Spier, Georgie Collins, and Murray Ord. Its plot centers on a trio of snowmobilers in the Canadian Rockies who become stranded at an abandoned hotel where the elderly female innkeeper is hiding an evil entity within the building. The film is inspired by the Windigo legend of North America.

Filmed in Banff, Alberta under a tax shelter in December 1980, the film had an unstable financial situation and the filmmakers nearly halted the production mid-way through due to depletion of its budget. The film was given a minuscule theatrical run in Canada and the United States and is consequently little-known among horror film fans, but has attained a cult following over the years.

Ghostkeeper

The independent cult label Code Red Releasing later acquired the film, and released on DVD for the first time in April 2012. In August 2017, they reissued the film on Blu-ray featuring a new 2K scan of the original film elements.

Ghostkeeper

Plot

Jenny, Marty, and Chrissy are spending their New Year's Eve on a snowmobiling trip in the Rocky Mountains. After talking with a storekeeper at a ski shop, the three decide to go riding before dark, but end up caught in a blizzard. Looming before them is a seemingly abandoned hotel at the top of the snow trail, isolated from tourists and miles away from the skiing area. The three enter the building to escape the increasingly harsh conditions, and find that the heat is on, but there are no lights. As night falls, they start a fire and tell stories and reminisce. Marty decides to go into the hotel kitchen where he finds an old woman lurking. She is brash and apprehensive of their presence, and they learn that she lives in the hotel with two unseen sons.

Ghostkeeper

Though hesitant, the woman lodges them in rooms. Marty and Jenny argue in their bedroom, while Chrissy goes down the hallway to take a bath since the plumbing in the rooms is obsolete. While in the bathtub, Chrissy is attacked by one of the sons, Danny, and held underwater. A restless Jenny goes to check on Chrissy, but the candle-lit bathroom is empty; Jenny then runs into the old woman and they have a conversation about the hotel and her sons. Meanwhile, Danny carries Chrissy to the basement of the hotel, where he slits her throat and then stores her body in a freezer. Jenny awakens in the night and hears the old woman talking to someone downstairs.

The next morning, Marty goes outside to the snowmobiles to activate them, with no success. Suspecting that they have been tampered with, he goes outside to an old shed for tools, while Jenny stays in the kitchen with the old woman. After accepting the tea from the offering woman, Jenny inquires about Chrissy's disappearance, but the old woman is evasive. Jenny returns to a lounge in the hotel where she realizes she's been drugged, and falls unconscious. She awakens in the basement, where she finds a book on First Nations folklore and reads that a Wendigo is often "kept" by an old woman who had the power passed on to her from another. She opens the freezer and discovers a human Windigo inside, being the old woman's second son. Danny then comes down to the basement with a chainsaw and chases Jenny throughout the hotel, up into the attic. Jenny exits through a window onto a small balcony; she manages to push him over, where he is impaled on an iron fence below.

Jenny finds Marty outside, who appears to be possessed and rambling to himself while wandering into the woods. Meanwhile, the storekeeper arrives at the hotel, where he is stabbed by the old woman. Jenny re-enters the hotel, where she finds Danny's body has been dragged into the foyer. She locates a shotgun in a storage room, and is confronted by the old woman, who claims that she is Jenny's deceased mother. Jenny shoots and kills her. Strangely overtaken, she visits the Wendigo in the freezer where she says that she "will look after you now." and finds Marty's body outside with no reaction. In the end, Jenny sits in a lounge chair in front of a fireplace as the old woman's voice is heard.