Ravenous

1999 *****

Hot damn! Five stars, bitches!

I don't know if anyone remembers, but before this year's contest started I was kicking around the idea of "recommended viewing" based not so much on the classics as on discoveries from 'thons past. In that spirit I watched Lemora and Ravenous, both recommendations of Johnny Sweatpants. This is exactly what I hope to find every year: not a movie I already knew was good, like Halloween or The Ring, but something juuust off the beaten path enough to 1) have decent production values and 2) be suprisingly totally freakin' awesome. Other examples I can think of just now include Dagon and Dog Soldiers.

(And I want to take a moment here to give another heap of HUGE props to Johnny Sweatpants's Horrorthon Monster List. It has been such a valuable resource while writing reviews. Both for reading older reviews as prep, and easing the required "read so-and-so's review" notices that sometimes break up the rhythm. Kudos, JSP!)

Guy Pearce plays a cowardly soldier who was so good at playing dead during a battle that the enemies throw him in a cart and pile corpses on top of him. After unwillingly swallowing the blood of his fellow soldiers, "something... changed" and he manages to crawl out and take the enemy camp single-handedly. This is all seen in a flashback, as by the movie's beginning he's been promoted for his brave deeds and sent to remote Fort Spencer as punishment for his cowardly ones (and a coward he remains, whatever "changed" having changed back.)

There he meets his new CO, played by Jeffrey Jones, who I always like to see getting work. While Jones is describing the likeable losers who staff Fort Spencer, we also meet this guy:

Described as "our soldier" and "best stay away from him," the zealous Private Reich is played by Neal McDonough, who answers that question nobody asked: what would the love child of Paul Walker and Ian Zeiring look like? I've only seen this guy in Minority Report, but his demeanor is one that I instantly dislike. And that feeling is used perfectly here, as he basically plays the 1847 version of the jock nobody can stand. Minor point, but I got the screenshot and everything...

One night this excellent cast is joined by Robert Carlyle, a settler who tells a horrifying tale of his group's fate. Trapped in a cave for months without sufficient supplies, they resorted to cannibalism to survive. But once their group leader got the taste for it, human flesh is all he wanted, and the settlers started to disappear one by one.

The sticky point is this: once you eat human flesh, you discover it's a food with power. Guy Pearce experienced this without meaning to while trapped beneath those bodies, and it repells him so much he can't eat meat. Others... don't quite have the same reaction. This secret is the beating heart of Ravenous, and I love the simplicity of that secrecy. Sure, we can make up a weird power that comes from cannibalism, because you've never tried it, have you?

Thinking there might still be a hapless woman in distress, the fort mounts a rescue party and heads for the cave. This is where the previous Horrorthon reviews (and mine) stop describing the plot, because this movie deserves to be savored raw. I even suggest you avoid the imdb page for Ravenous, as it may drop a hint to stuff you don't want to know.

But I will say this. I expected the whole movie was going to involve the group battling the forces that awaited them in the cave, getting picked off one by one, probably ending in a final showdown between the two final players. The story is soooo much more, taking a number of turns I didn't see coming and delighting me all the way.

Good plot, great cast, great character arcs, beautiful scenery, very cool and original soundtrack, blood, gore, death, violence and a big cauldron of human stew. What more could you want? See it.