A family vacationing in The Badlands disturb a Sioux burial site and unleash a ancient conflict between Good and Evil but which is which?

SYNOPSIS:

A family of four (Man, Woman, Daughter, Son) moving across country in a large Winnebago, stopover in the Badlands of South Dakota. The boy finds a Sioux burial cave and steals a Native American headdress, but his father forces him to replace it. A mysterious figure is watching them. The second night their dog sensing the presence of other animals gets out of the Winnebago and confronts a pack of coyotes. In the morning the boy finds a severed animal limb and in anger returns back to the cave to re-steal the headdress.

The family follow and find him high on a ledge wearing the headdress and aping a war dance. A strange wind whips up along the ledge yet all is calm beneath. Through the ensuing dust storm the boys espies four Native Americans (Grandfather, Father, and two Grandsons). A huge gust takes him off his feet and he plunges to his death.

The Native American father instructs the grandfather to take the two boys back to the reservation while he explains their innocence to the boy’s family, but the younger boy eludes the old man and runs back, frightened for his father’s safety. He arrives to find his father arguing with the family and hides. Suddenly the family transform into bears and rip his father apart. He runs away, but is pursued, finally eluding them when he falls, unseen, into a tree trying to jump a narrow gorge.

That night the grandfather makes a fireless camp with the elder son. He tells him the Bear myth and how the creature participated in the slaughters at Wounded Knee and Sand Creek and how his instinctively knew of their presence. As the boy sleeps the old man writes something. Later he is awoken by the family who have tracked them (in human form) and killed the elder boy. Fearing the younger boy is also dead he questions his faith against the arguments and the shocking revelations of the bear man and how he has survived and bred. As they are about to kill him he discovers they have not hunted down the youngest boy and regains his faith.

As morning breaks the young boy finds courage within himself to confront the bear family. On route he finds his grandfather and the note he had left him and heads for a showdown at a Sioux Burial Ground. He dances the Wovoka to summon the ancient spirits but nothing happens and then the family arrive. As the man berates the boy’s futile attempts a mist gathers behind them. The family attack and wound the boy, but are repelled and killed by weapons thrown by the shadowy figures from the fog.

In the morning the boy vows to return to the reservation with his tale of how they came to combat an ancient evil hoping to revive his grandfather’s belief in the spirits, but in a repeat of the opening scene (when a prairie dog is killed) he is run over by a Winnebago driven by, what appears to be, the bear man and his family.

The final shot zooms in slowly to what appears to be a coyote, perched on a crest, howling but is in fact the family dog, alive and master of all that he sees.

MYTH