Ravenous

(1999) **** 1/2

I’m definitely becoming a vegetarian again. Ravenous turned out to be a must-see treat, with a great cast, a sense of humor, some really disgusting scenes, a fast moving script, and a weirdly charming little electronic score. It was filmed in some part of Czechoslovakia that posed beautifully as the Sierra Nevada mountains, so the fantastic scenery didn’t hurt, and neither did the savvy editing.

It's the 1800s, and everything's rustic and everyone's dirty. Guy Pearce plays Boyd, a cowardly soldier sent to a lonely mountain outpost. One night, a stranger (Robert Carlyle) shows up emaciated, freezing, and freaked out, telling a story about a cannibal army officer gone wild. Hearing that there may be a survivor of the recent slaughter, Colonel Hart (Jeffrey Jones) leads the fort crew out to a spooky cave to fight the man-eaters. Unfortunately, things don’t go too well out there at the cave, and I won’t spoil the rest.

The main thing to know is that it seems human flesh is not only delicious but extremely nutritious, conveying extra energy, virility, self healing powers, and oh, also the combined strength of everybody you happen to eat. People meat is just so awesome that once you get a taste, you can't stop the craving. That's right. You become ravenous.

Highlights include one of my very favorite actors, Jeremy Davies, doing his usual mumbly schtick. If you’ve seen him act once, you’ve seen him act in everything, but I can’t seem to get tired of him. He plays a timid reverend at the fort. The rest of the rag tag bunch of victims—I mean soldiers—include the overly zealous Private Reich; the constantly soused doctor, Knox; and the peyote popping Private Cleaves (a great comic turn by David Arquette).

Seriously, this was a solid movie to start with and I can’t recommend it enough. I don’t quite understand the star system, because I don’t watch enough of the movies referenced to contextualize this one. But I knows what I likes!

And on a personal note, during the climactic scene, Z woke up, ravenous, and demanded a little of my flesh. So I felt connected to this movie in quite a visceral way.