Horror becomes Larry Fessenden. But as the late afternoon light struggles to find its way past the oaky shadows of a bar on Avenue A, the 44-year-old filmmaker looks less like the boogeyman he often is cast as, and more like a neighborhood character. He’s the kind of guy bartenders greet by name. His shaggy appearance, characterized by a prominent forehead and a missing front tooth, was more the norm for the East Village when he settled there in the early 1980s.

But it’s also what keeps the actor and director in folding green. America’s been seeing a lot of Mr. Fessenden lately, as his brief, menacing appearance in the new Jodie Foster film, “The Brave One,” has been highlighted in TV spots.

“It’s a very arbitrary moment,” Mr. Fessenden said, sipping on a pint of draft beer. “I’m her first vigilante move. I start stalking her and she does away with me in short order. I’m not a real character. I’m first blood.”

Mr. Fessenden began training early for what he calls “corpse work.” As a child, he said, “I used to spend hours trying to hold my breath and keep my eyes open as long as possible, I loved horror so much.” Such skills have long won the affection of casting agents. So has that missing tooth, which got knocked out by a gang of street kids who were harassing his then-girlfriend at a party in Brooklyn 23 years ago.

“It wasn’t a big violent deal,” he said. “It was arbitrary. Which fits my view of life.” Much like his friend Steve Buscemi, Mr. Fessenden’s rejection of cosmetic dentistry has been a boon. His bit parts in big movies help support his more personal efforts as a producer of independent films that skew the horror genre toward intensely psychological terrain. His new film, “The Last Winter,” which opens Wednesday at the IFC Center, locates fear in an unlikely subject: global warming.

Set amid the vast white expanse of a Northern Alaskan encampment where a team of oil company employees are preparing to drill, the film tracks a lurking dread that grows lethal as mysterious things begin happening in the ice. It’s impossible to watch without flashing on John Carpenter’s fatalistic remake of “The Thing,” but for Mr. Fessenden, the impending threat is not so corporeal. As the crusty, bushwhacking team leader Pollack (Ron Perlman) fights the doom-saying scientist Hoffman (James LeGros), who wants to shut down his operation, a crew member wanders naked into the frigid void, hallucinating … something.

“I still want to give people the sense of how you create a myth by anthropomorphizing nature,” Mr. Fessenden said. “I’m not saying the ‘creature’ created global warming. It’s more something that the characters are going through. I find the world to be a threatening and mysterious place. And the interactions and self-betrayal that goes on in society and relationships is just so potent. That’s where I derive my horror. I guess that’s why people call them personal films. Rather than the encroaching guy with the axe, I’m more interested in the grasp of reality being a tenuous thing. It’s a frightening place to be. That’s existence.”

Mr. Fessenden noted Mr. Carpenter’s influence, as well as what he calls a great “ice movie,” Akira Kurosawa’s “Dersu Uzala.” And if audiences want to infer that the film’s combative male leads are stand-ins for President Bush and Vice President Gore, then they are welcome to the notion. “The film really is about partisanship in America,” he said. “That’s what’s so sad about our country. It is a cartoon struggle. It’s not about searching for common ground and truth. I always say a character like Pollack’s is what made this country great and if he sticks to his guns he’ll destroy it.”

Despite appearances, the filmmaker is a home owner and a family man who has long been engaged in environmental concerns. When he begins talking about hurricanes, floods, and the improbable thunderstorm that crashed down on his rugged Icelandic set — on cue, no less, though a rain machine had been set up for the occasion — it all begins to sound like a series of biblical plagues. Freakily enough, the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” (“Ooh, a storm is threatening…”) plays in the background of the bar.

Mr. Fessenden finds a profound melancholy in this. “I think horror has to do with loss and the end of something you call home,” he said. “It’s a sad thing. What if this is no longer the world we grew up in? If you grew up in New England, what if the leaves don’t turn brown anymore and the syrup doesn’t flow? That’s what we’re looking at. I would love it if this was all a liberal fantasy.”